


Mystique

by Bordeaux_at_dusk



Series: Peculiar Moments [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: I barely just recovered from the last fic oh no, M/M, flexing my unfinished liberal arts degree, get ready kids we're getting philosophical, this time let's discuss aesthetics and what it means to be alive, yet another thriller turned character study
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 36
Words: 21,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23983405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bordeaux_at_dusk/pseuds/Bordeaux_at_dusk
Summary: THIS FIC WRITER SUPPORTS BLM SORRY THE REAL LIFE JUSTICE SYSTEM SUCKS ASSSequel to "Unusual", but you don't need to have read it to enjoy this one.On Hiatus due to personal issuesJust like last time, there's some heavy themes in this baby, so be prepared. (This time, we'll tackle the concept of aesthetics, how people romanticize crime, the stigmas of mental illness and addiction, why human beings love tragedy, the good and bad sides of tradition, and what it really means to be "alive".)Nines and Gavin have settled down into their new lives with each other. But as Nines struggles to understand his place in this odd new relationship, he finds that nothing is as it seems.There's a new murderer and a new body, and just like their last case, secrets lie in every corner, waiting to be unveiled.Noir thriller-inspired, but there's dorky comedic relief to break up the tension.
Relationships: Gavin Reed/RK900 Android(s), Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Series: Peculiar Moments [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1729261
Comments: 80
Kudos: 95





	1. Juliet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PSA: I'm going back and editing chapter formatting, so if you see any weird chapter repeats or if parts of the fic are missing, that means I'm editing and I'll fix it ASAP!
> 
> Thank you so much to Leaadriale, day_dreemurr, 42Blueberries, Ethere4l, Blue_moon22, Guadalupe711, HallowRose, handsstainedblue, faux_strider, Queenkitty2929, Ciella_303, Mskittykatcabootle, HeadphonesGal, Dragon97586, BecausePlot, and our seven unnamed (but, as always, highly esteemed) guests for the kudos!

Forget-me-nots.

The dead woman’s eyes were the same color as the flowers in her hair. 

She was poised, artfully, in an elegant position that looked almost like a sculpture. Rigor mortis held her in place. The crown of forget-me-nots was integrated with an elaborate veil of white lace that fell gracefully down her back. 

The bloodstained silk wedding gown she was wrapped in extended outward, rippling over the room, which was staged like a movie set; a host of antique items and classic still-life objects had been structured to frame her. Elaborate globes mingled with vases of flowers mingled with stacks of old yellowing books, covers frayed. Warm light streamed in lazily from large arcing windows, illuminating the oakwood floors of the room. 

The light glinted off the pearl dagger embedded in the woman’s chest. In front of her, a gold-leafed, leather-bound edition of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet had been left open to the infamous scene: 

“O, happy dagger, this is thy sheath.”

A human would undoubtedly call the scene beautiful. 

To Nines, however, it was simply another murder.

He was capable of appreciating beauty, although many would be surprised to hear it. (Some people were surprised to hear that androids were capable of any abstract thought at all.) 

Nines understand the concept of aesthetic value perfectly well. What he was not capable of understanding was how humans, in their love of aesthetic value, sometimes seemed to discard logic and reason. 

The concept of a beautiful murder was immaterial to him. It was still murder. Whether it was committed in a wide-open oak room or in a rotting gutter made no difference. 

Nines would hunt down and eliminate the murderer either way. 

He was glad that Gavin felt the same, although Nines was concerned that he seemed disproportionately unnerved by something. What exactly it was, Nines couldn’t tell. 

He knew that Gavin was upset partially from the rising levels of adrenaline in his scans, partially from the fact that Gavin’s pupils were dilated and he was beginning to fidget in the way he typically expressed distress (tapping his fingers together and pacing, mostly) and partially from the fact that he was increasing his profanity from its normal rate of about every one in fifteen words to every one in ten. 

Nines had spent a lot of time analyzing Gavin Reed. Perhaps an irrational amount. 

It hadn’t helped much. 

Nines guessed that the cause of his partner’s distress must be some deeply-held psychological trauma. Humans often experienced it, and Gavin personally had suffered a difficult childhood. Whatever the reason for his distress, it must be very serious. 

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘ I don’t know ’, Tina?! ” his partner was currently yelling into his phone. “It’s a simple goddamn question! Do they have jalapeno poppers or not?!”

Fascinating. 

Nines was well equipped to read Gavin, but very poorly equipped to understand him. The difference, he felt, was vast. He was... displeased by it. Androids were predictable, generally. Deviants much less so than non-deviants, of course, but they were still more logical than humans. At first Nines had been convinced that Gavin was simply uncomfortable expressing his emotions, but the android had begun to discover that Gavin himself was often unaware of them. 

Perhaps there was some unpleasant memory jalapeno poppers evoked for his partner. He would have to ask later. Nines would have preferred to have Gavin leave the room and take a few minutes to calm down, but he had learned recently that it wasn’t an option. Apparently, Nines doing what he was designed to do and examining the physical evidence without Gavin’s interference meant he was “being a fucking know-it-all” and a “stuck-up asshole.”

 _“Look,”_ Gavin had said a few weeks ago, waving a hand dismissively to try and distract from the fact that he was clearly upset. _“ It’s no big deal. Just don’t keep fucking asking me to leave in the middle of crime scenes, okay?”_

Nines had been unable to see the point of this request. _“ Gavin, you were clearly disgusted by the scope of the damage done to the victim.”_

 _“Well, yeah,”_ Gavin had muttered sulkily, _“but you don’t need to be all weird about it. Look, Nines, I want to do my job. Let me do it. Even if I’m not really helping, just let me feel like I am, okay?”_

Nines had been even more confused. _“ If you aren’t going to help, why are you so determined to be there? Humans aren’t exactly well-equipped for forensic analysis to begin with. I don’t hold it against you.”_

It had escalated into a full-blown fight that left Nines more confused than ever until Gavin was finally able to articulate that he didn’t want to feel useless.

The absurdity and simplicity of the answer had caught Nines off guard. Gavin Reed, useless? They had won a medal together just six months ago for solving an incredibly dangerous case, saving the lives of ten other officers in the process (and possibly the entire DPD). Their success had almost entirely been due to Gavin. Useless?

Nines strongly disagreed. 

He had told Gavin so. Nines always said what he meant. 

Gavin had huffed under his breath.

 _“ Alright, shit, I get it,”_ he’d said, trying and failing not to smile. _“You’re a big fucking suck-up.”_

Nines knew enough about humans to understand that the insulting response had roughly meant, in Gavin-language, _“Thank you, Nines. I’m flattered.”_

What confused him is why Gavin didn’t just say _that_ instead. 

Humans never said what they meant. It was inconvenient. 

Gavin's voice snapped him out of his reverie.

“Hey, Robocop. You find anything?”

Nines blinked. Gavin was staring at him, phone in hand, waiting. 

Nine shook his head. “This crime scene is so elaborately staged, I can’t move through it without risking disrupting the evidence. Every object in this room is potentially a key to solving the case. There’s a very low probability the killer managed to set this up without leaving some traces of his presence behind-- fingerprints, hair, DNA. It would be better to wait until forensics arrives, and allow them to do their job. “

Gavin wrinkled his nose, thinking. It was a habit of his.

(One that Nines found extremely distracting, but it wasn’t the time for that.) 

“Is something bothering you, Detective?” Nines asked. 

Gavin huffed. “Yeah, stop calling me ‘detective.’ You know my name.”

He paused for a moment, sighed, and then gestured to the scene in front of them.

“It’s this whole thing, Nines. I hate it when they do this shit. It’s so fucked up. Trying to turn something so horrible into something pretty, or romantic, or-- I don’t know. You’ll see. These cases are always hell to investigate. We can’t let a single drop of this leak to the media, or else this poor girl is going to be on the front page of every newspaper across the country. ‘The Girl In the Wedding Dress’, or some shit like that.”

Nines didn’t understand. “I’m not sure I’m following you. You don’t want her case to be publicized?”

Gavin shook his head. “Hell no. How do I explain this? Okay. This girl, she’s not fucking Juliet, right? What's her real name? You know it already with your facial recognition?”

“Ashley Briggs.”

“Okay. She’s not Juliet. She’s Ashley. Ashley was a whole person, with a life and family and friends, and then some fucking creepy asshole murdered her and dressed her up like Juliet. The media’s problem is, they like stories with publicity. They like stuff that has a nice ring to it. Ashley Briggs, not so much. ‘The Girl in the White Dress?’ ‘The Woman in White?’ some other bullshit like that? They eat that up. A picture of a pretty girl in a wedding dress with a dagger in her chest? That’s the kind of stuff they eat for breakfast. They love it, Nines! It’s like the Black Dahlia. If any of this gets out, nobody will give two fucks about Ashley Briggs, but they’ll all love her death."

Gavin stopped for a moment to take a breath, hands gesturing wildly, eyes narrowed in anger.

"Rumors will be everywhere. Poor Ashley’s family is gonna have to deal with photos of their little girl murdered and dressed up in a fucking wedding dress all over every tabloid in the grocery store for the next eight years. And not a single one of the people obsessed with ‘Juliet’ is gonna give a shit about Ashley. Everyone’s gonna see her how the killer saw her, how he wanted us to see her, how he set her up: as pretty tragic Juliet in a wedding dress. Nobody is gonna know or remember Ashley Briggs. Don’t you see how fucked up that is? They never give a shit about the victim, even though they pretend to. It’s always about the fucking killer and his ideology.”

Nines was stunned. He had never considered that aspect of a crime before. Looking at it from that perspective, it did seem disturbing.

“They’ll romanticize her murder," he finished for Gavin, who looked almost too angry to continue. 

Gavin nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets. “The most fucked up part is, that’s what he _wants_. Her killer staged her this way because he’s trying to put on a fucking show. This is a murder with a message, we just don’t know what it is. I hate that those bastards always seem to get the attention they want. People always remember the killer, but they never remember the victim. Hell, how many people do you think could name a single victim of Ted Bundy? Or Jeffery Dahmer? Or any of the other sick bastards that decide to take their sexual fantasies out on so many innocent people that everyone forgets about?”

Nines raised an eyebrow. “We don’t know that this murder is sexual in nature.”

Gavin huffed. “Nah, but there’s a pattern when it comes to motive and method. There’s tons of examples. Um. Execution-style gunshots to the back of the head are cold, professional. Victim’s turned away, there’s a distance between them and the killer. No eye contact. Hired killers, a lot of the time.” 

Gavin demonstrated with a finger gun, eyes distant, like he was remembering cases he’d seen before. 

“Stranglings are personal, and a lot of the time they’re sexual. Killer’s up close, right in their face. Looking them in the eye, watching them slowly die, hands-on contact. It’s ‘intimate’ for those fucked-up pieces of shit. They’re normally sexual sadists. Hate those ones.”

Gavin’s brow wrinkled in disgust as he demonstrated. 

“Stabbings are personal too, but in a different way. Bloody, aggressive, painful. Personal vendetta, lots of times. Someone close to the victim with a grudge. Betrayal maybe, ‘cause there’s anger behind it. Besides, she’s staged as fucking _Juliet_. Who do you think her Romeo’s supposed to be? The mailman?”

Nines hummed in response. He didn’t doubt Gavin’s theory, but any investigation should work from the external to the internal. The solid evidence should be interpreted to form theories, not theories interpreted to fit the evidence. The second an investigator began to let their personal opinions dictate the situation, they became biased. 

“I still believe we should wait for the evidence to be analyzed before assuming anything.”

Gavin crossed his arms. His body language throughout this speech had been aggressive. Nines’ scans told him that Gavin was intensely angry. 

“I’m not fucking _assuming_ , I’m theorizing. If the evidence says something different then I’ll change my tune. I’m just saying, maybe the fact that she’s being staged all pretty in a fancy room in a wedding dress mirroring the suicide from goddamn ‘ Romeo and Juliet’ might have some _tiny_ romantic undertones, Nines.”

“So perhaps we should interview her neighbors first.”

“Hell yes, we should,” Gavin said. “Starting with whoever found the body.” 

He started to turn away to head out the door. 

Nines stopped him. “Gavin, wait.”

He twisted back around in surprise. “What?” 

Nines pressed his hands together, standing stiffly. “Are you angry with me?”

Gavin stopped in his tracks and paused for a moment in an emotion Nines was unable to read. There was a second of tension, and then Nines’ partner seemed to crumple inward as he sighed heavily, shoving his hands back into his pockets.

“No,” he said to the floor by his feet. “Sorry. It’s this case. Stuff like this- it’s fucking creepy. I get all tense. Of course I’m not mad at you, dumbass. I’m just- I’m not good at expressing shit, y’know. ”

Nines walked up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Is there anything I can do?”

Gavin’s entire demeanor changed, going from aggressive to something much more vulnerable instantly. It was a switch that, even though they’d been together for six months now, Nines had rarely seen.

“No,” Gavin said softly. “I just want to catch the bastard. Otherwise, cases like this, they always stick with me. I’ll- I’ll see her everywhere. Ashley, I mean. In mirrors, reflections, dreams. Asking me why I couldn’t do it. People always act like murder investigations are some cop-show badass bullshit, but they aren’t. The pressure’s gonna be hell. We’re gonna have to go through her whole life and dig up a lot of secrets. Everyone has graves that are better left buried. Take my word for it, it’s gonna suck. And even if we find the fucking bastard, he still might get off. Normally, I can distance myself from it, I guess, but when it’s something this creepy- I just- I don’t know if I can do it. There's something about this case. I have such a bad fucking feeling about this whole thing. It’s driving me crazy. ”

Nines reached out and wrapped his arms around Gavin, pulling him close. It was meant as a comforting gesture, and he noticed with satisfaction that his partner’s distress seemed to decrease. 

Nines was beginning to understand how to react to Gavin’s moods, even if he didn’t always understand the reason why they were happening. They had both worked dozens of homicide cases. Nines didn’t understand how this case was any different, but it didn’t matter. He was programmed to adapt to human unpredictability.

He never knew what to make of Gavin’s hunches, though. They were objectively irrational, and they were also always right. It drove him insane. It defied reason.

Then again, nothing about Gavin was reasonable. 

“We’re professionals,” Nines began, “and-”

“And you’re hugging me in the middle of a fucking murder scene,” Gavin interrupted, voice muffled from pressing his face into Nines’ shoulder, “like a true professional.”

“You needed a hug. Let me finish. We’re professionals, and there’s a lot of potential just in this room for the killer to have made a mistake. The chances of him staging all this with zero forensic evidence left behind are very low-”

“Mhmmm,” Gavin said, leaning into the hug.

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Nope,” Gavin muttered. 

Nines sighed. 

He gently pulled Gavin away from him, brushing off his partner’s coat, which was eternally covered in cat hair. 

“We need to go interview the neighbors. Listen. We work very well together. We’ve faced near-impossible odds before. Compared to our last big case, this will most likely be easy.”

“Nothing’s ever easy,” Gavin groaned. “Especially not in fucking homicide.”

“Well then, we’ll support each other, just like last time.”

Gavin smiled wryly. “Are you going to break a rib and give me a concussion again?”

“That highly depends,” Nines said, “on whether or not you plan to shoot me a second time.”

“You told me to!”

“I was paralyzed and all my communications were disabled. I couldn’t _tell_ you to do anything." 

“Your light flashed!”

“My LED,” Nines said, raising an eyebrow, “never stops flashing, unless I’m decommissioned.”

Gavin shoved him-- an adorably futile effort, considering he didn’t move even a fraction of an inch. 

“Come on, smartass,” Gavin said. “We have some friendly neighbors to interrogate.”

  
  



	2. Chiaroscuro

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Nines.  
> The world is so irrational and he's so... not, lol.  
> He's such an interesting character. In a way he's distant, but he's still warm. It's odd. I like it. 
> 
> No one should ever allow me to write anything philosophical, ever. You're all gonna be so sick of my pretentiousness by the end of this. I apologize in advance.

Nines followed Gavin out of Ashley Briggs’ apartment, the heavy wooden floor creaking underneath his feet as he smoothly dodged the caution tape that was criss-crossed through the doorway. 

The hallway was open and comfortable, a stark contrast to the majority of apartment buildings in Detroit. Large windows let in sunlight from outside, where the delicate spring was beginning to turn to a warm, balmy summer. The buttery light cast the people standing in the hall in light and shadow, making the scene feel like a _chiaroscuro_ painting, dappled and dramatic and oddly baroque. Several police officers stood guard, keeping anyone from coming through. One of them was off to the side comforting a tear-stained woman, face buried in her hands.

Gavin made a beeline for her. Nines couldn’t help but appreciate the way the sunlight illuminated him, plunging him into the scene the second he stepped within range of the nearest window. He looked… aesthetically pleasing. Not that Nines particularly cared, but it was pleasant to observe. 

No, now was not the time. He had to focus.

The murder scene had been staged like a tragedy.

Nines didn’t understand _why._

There was something very human about tragedy, Nines realized. The realization… _bothered_ him. He was not human and would never be. The concept of feeling so strongly was foreign. He experienced emotion on a much shallower level. He knew sadness, and pain, but he knew them in a distant, dulled, abstract way. He would never understand what it was like to _feel_ the way Gavin did. He could sense it in his scans-- all the people here were united in their grief, united in a uniquely irrational, emotional pain he would never experience. 

Nines didn’t want to experience tragedy. It was an irrational and destructive emotion. 

He didn’t want to experience it, yet…

To solve this case, perhaps he needed to _understand_ it. 

Could he ever understand something that he was incapable of feeling?

Sometimes Nines wondered if he was really alive. 

He should study the way the humans reacted to the scene. Maybe, if he observed them closely enough, he could gain a better understanding of why the murderer had committed his crime. 

A sense of unreality saturated the air as Nines and Gavin walked up to the crying woman.

She stood, staring, as they approached. She was dressed professionally, in a red pencil skirt and blazer with a white button-up blouse. Her hair was up in a strict bun. She had dressed up to leave for work, most likely, Nines noted. How had she discovered Ashley Briggs' body? Tears glinted on her face. A portrait of grief-- her face was twisted from it. The woman was certainly in extreme distress. 

It was undesirable. Nines disliked seeing any humans in unnecessary distress. He would have to do what he could to comfort her. Nines’ facial recognition told him who she was: Elena Garcia, 28 years old. 

“Hello, ma’am,” Gavin greeted Elena. “I’m so sorry for your loss. We’re going to do whatever we can to make sure Ashley gets justice. Are you the one that found her?”

Elena nodded, sniffing loudly. “She texted me the day before yesterday and asked me to come over. I was at work, focused on a big project so I told her I’d drop by in the morning today. What if she was-” her voice broke.

“What if she was-” it broke again, this time with a sob. Gavin shifted his weight from one foot to the other, waiting patiently. 

“What if she was murdered and I didn’t do anything?” Elena finally managed, staring at them both through eyes that were rapidly overflowing with tears again. 

“Ms. Garcia,” Nines said as gently as possible. “The only one responsible for this is the killer. You couldn’t have known this would happen, and it’s not your fault.”

Gavin shot him an approving look before turning back to her. “We’re going to need to see those text messages, please.”

Elena sniffed and reached into her purse. 

“Of course. I’m sorry. I’m just- I don’t understand why all of this happened to Ash. She’s- she was-” She burst into tears again, handing her phone over with one hand. The other hand came up to cover her face, and she turned away. 

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m trying to answer all the questions, but- I just- I just keep crying. I can’t stop.”

“We completely understand. Take all the time you need,” Nines said, reaching out to take the phone. He interfaced with it instantly, hand shimmering solid white as the illusion of skin vanished.

Gavin huffed in surprise. As Elena turned away, he whispered quietly to Nines. 

“Oh yeah. Forgot you could do that shit. So, what’s it say?”

“One moment,” Nines replied. “I’ll take a record.”

  
  



	3. Interlude One (Evidence Record)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man we've reached the first interlude!
> 
> Some interesting information going on here.
> 
> I think all the interludes are going to be some form of direct evidence, unlike the ones in Unusual, which were all flashbacks. Since this is from Nines' perspective instead of Gavin's, I think it might help us tap into that more evidence-centered mindset, since last time we mostly relied on Gavin's hunches for information. I don't know, I'm experimenting.  
> We'll see how it goes. I like the idea of you guys getting to "investigate" like Nines.  
> Let me know what you think!
> 
> As always, thanks so much for your support!
> 
> EDIT: I keeping making mistakes with the timeline! It should be all fixed now. Forgive me, guys: it’s a bit complicated. I’ll be more careful in the future.

**_INTERLUDE ONE_ **

_EVIDENCE RECORD_

_Record of Communications between Elena Garcia and Ashley Briggs_

_On the Date of May 6th, 2038_

**5/6/2038 at 9:02PM From: Ash <3**

hey bby come over 

**5/6/2038 at 9:04PM Sent.**

Ugh, I can’t. I’m working late :(

**5/6/2038 at 9:07PM From: Ash <3**

laaaaame plz i want to see u it’s important

**5/6/2038 at 9:10PM Sent.**

Sorry I really can’t. Big project. You ok? Call me. 

**5/6/2038 at 9:14PM From: Ash <3**

nah it’s cool. proud of u & ur fancy ass job 

**5/6/2038 at 9:17PM Sent.**

Shut up lol. I’ll come by once it’s done day after tomorrow. 

**5/6/2038 at 9:23PM From: Ash <3**

no plz don’t. get some rest after all ur long nights. seriously

**5/7/2038 at 7:43 AM From: Ash <3**

love u Lena & i’m sorry

**5/7/2038 at 7:58AM Sent.**

Ok, I will. Love you too. Sorry for what, lol?

**5/7/2038 at 8:37AM Sent.**

Last day on this fucking project. Kill me.

**5/7/2038 at 12:03PM Sent.**

Ash what are you sorry for? Pick up.

**5/7/2038 at 8:42PM Sent.**

Hey pick up your phone dumbass. I’m getting worried. Did you relapse? You at Ace’s?

**5/8/2038 at 7:05AM Sent.**

Ashley. I’m here. Ace says he hasn't seen you. You won't answer the door or your phone.

Where are you?! If I don’t hear from you in an hour I’m calling the police. Please be okay.

  
  



	4. Unprofessional

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Nines.  
> He's so over it. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who's supporting the fic!

Nines hummed to himself, quietly.

“What?” Gavin asked, glancing at Elena, who had walked a short distance away to sit down on a nearby bench and put her head in her hands. 

“Ms. Garcia and our victim appear to have been in a romantic relationship,” Nines said. 

Gavin’s eyes widened for a second, then narrowed again in anger. “Oh, fuck. You think it could be a hate crime? Upholding ‘traditional romance’ and all that bullshit? It would explain the whole ‘ Juliet’ thing, and why there’s classical shit like books and globes and flowers everywhere.” He glanced back at Elena, who was crying softly on the bench. “Maybe some jackass was in love with Ashley and couldn’t handle rejection, so he decided she and Elena didn’t deserve to be happy together. Jesus, that’s horrible.”

“Possibly,” Nines said disapprovingly, still unwilling to commit to a theory with so little evidence. “There’s more. Ashley asked Elena to come over the day before the murder, to tell her something important.”

Gavin sniffed and brought a hand up to scratch his face, thinking. The light from the windows made him look like a classical sculpture, lazy and regal. “Yeah, she said that already.”

“I’m not finished. The last text sent from Ashley’s phone says ‘Love you, Lena. I’m sorry.’ And there’s more-”

Gavin’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other excitedly, like a small child who had figured out the answer to a difficult question in school. “What? But that implies that either Ashley knew she was going to be murdered, or the murderer was using her phone to text Elena.”

Nines shot him an unimpressed look. “Or, she could just be apologizing for bothering Elena at work. You’re making quite a lot of irrational assumptions, detective.”

Gavin grinned. “It’s my specialty. Anyway, I have a hunch that something’s not right with those text messages. We’re talking _hardcore_ bad vibes.”

“I don’t think the justice system accepts ‘hardcore bad vibes’ as evidence,” Nines stated, face expressionless.

“Hey, my hunches saved your life that one time in the parking lot!”

“If by ‘saved my life’, you mean you mercifully decided _not_ to shoot me that time, then yes.”

“You nearly fucking crushed me to death in that same case!”

“Gavin, I saved you from a detonating bomb.”

Gavin crossed his arms. “I was in the hospital for _three weeks_ . _”_

“That,” Nines shot back, “was entirely the bomb. I had nothing to do with it. Now we need to discu-”

“Uh-huh. You did a pretty shit job of ‘saving’ me from it, then.”

Nines sighed. “All right. If you break your leg again and we encounter another bomb, I’ll be sure to leave you to die this time. Now can we please get back to the text me-”

“If this case is anything like _that_ one,” Gavin muttered, “I’ll beg you to kill me first. I’m not going through that shit again.”

Nines’s eyes narrowed in irritation. “I’ll make it quick. Now, we need t-”

“Sweet. Now let’s stop fucking around and do our jobs. Come on, Nines, you’re an android. You’re supposed to keep my irrational human ass in check. ”

Nines raised an eyebrow and started to respond, but Gavin shushed him. 

“Shut up. Stop being witty, it’s inappropriate workplace behavior.”

‘How is it-” 

“Shhh! There’s been a murder. God, Nines.”

“I’m trying t-”

“Shut up! We need to focus!” Gavin waved his hands in irritation, pressing his fingers to his temples. “I get the feeling I’m missing something about the texts.”

Nines rolled his eyes.

Suddenly, a voice interrupted them. 

“Excuse me,” Elena said, still sniffing. She'd walked back up to them unnoticed. “Could I have my phone back, please?”

Nines recovered instantly and handed it over. “Of course, Ms. Garcia. We’re so sorry.”

Gavin was less smooth. He nearly jumped when she spoke before clearing his throat awkwardly and staring at his feet with a sheepish facial expression. 

“Ms. Garcia,” Nines continued, voice perfectly level, “Can you please tell us who this ‘Ace’ you mentioned in your texts with Ashley is?”

Gavin looked at him in confusion. Nines pointedly ignored him. 

Lena nodded. “He’s- um- he’s our neighbor. Ace Holloway. He’s a good friend. He’s right next door.” She pointed to the next apartment over. 

Behind her, Gavin mouthed “Ace Holloway?” with a vague air of disbelief.

Nines shot him an unimpressed glance and turned back to Elena, voice calm and professional. “Thank you. I understand this is a personal question, but I need to ask. In your text messages, you asked Ashley if she’d relapsed. Does she have a history of drug addiction?”

Gavin looked dumbfounded. 

Elena looked at the ground awkwardly. “Um, yes. But she’s past it now, I promise. Ash had a hard childhood. She was a kind of up-and-coming child star as a kid, modeling in Hollywood as a teenager, all that stuff. Her parents were trying to push her into acting, throwing her into some really sketchy programs. One of her directors started making her work ridiculously long hours, pushing her to do red ice so she’d stay awake, and she got addicted. Ash lost her modeling career because of it, and her parents kicked her out. I thought she might’ve…”

“Does Ace Holloway do red ice?” Nines asked.

Elena shook her head frantically. “Ace? No. He’s just kind of… off the wall. You’ll see. He’s had a hard life too. Ash likes to go over and talk to him whenever things get rough.”

Nines nodded. “Thank you, Ms. Garcia. I know this must be very difficult for you. Everything you’ve said is an enormous help. Have you already given your statement on how you found Ashley?”

Elena pressed her lips together, eyes watering. “Yes.”

“Then you should be free to go. We’ll be in touch. Take care of yourself, and please call us if you think of anything that might help the investigation.”

Elena nodded. “I will. Th- thank you.” 

She turned away and walked off, looking on the verge of tears.

Gavin immediately rounded on Nines.

“Who the fuck is _Ace Holloway_? Ashley Briggs had a drug addiction? Why didn’t you fucking tell me?”

“I was trying to,” Nines said, moving down the hallway towards Ace’s front door, “but _apparently,_ it was unprofessional.”

  
  



	5. They Always Come Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol thanks for bearing with me you guys! This one will take a lot longer to develop than Unusual, which basically all happened in the span of fifteen-ish minutes.  
> This will be a whole investigation, so there's a lot more to set up and I have to take more time to develop the plot. 
> 
> Thank you so much everyone who's supporting the fic so far!

Nines established three facts very quickly. 

The first was that Ace Holloway was flirting with Gavin. 

The second was that he was perhaps the warmest human being in existence. 

The third was that Nines strongly disliked him. 

They sat on Ace’s worn-down sofa, which had a paint-splattered cover on it. The entire apartment was filled with paintings-- they invaded every space and void, filling the room with color and dynamism and vibrance. 

Ace himself had dyed purple hair and an easy, natural smile. He had been playing acoustic guitar when they’d knocked on his door, and the worst part was, he’d been playing it _well._

“Yeah,” he’d said offhandedly when Gavin had mentioned it. “Got classically trained in college. Never did anything with it. Only the paintings hear my music, and they’re sick of it.” 

He’d winked, and it had been such an easy, friendly, _human_ gesture that Nines had immediately felt out of place. 

He kept struggling to find something practical to dislike about Ace and failing spectacularly. 

Had Ace seen Ashley Briggs recently? Perhaps he was a suspect.

“Nah,” Ace muttered, pouring Gavin a warm cup of chai tea with milk and sugar. “Ash only comes over during really rough times. We’re kinda like soul twins. We vibe on the same level. Ash and Ace, y’know, got a ring to it and everything. I haven’t seen her since she and Lena had a party last week. Ash is really happy with Lena, so I don’t see her much at all anymore, actually. I don’t mind, though.” 

Ace put down the handmade teapot (created in a seven-month intensive ceramics class in France, he’d told them when he pulled it off the shelf) and grinned. “To be honest, I’m really happy for her.”

Gavin broke the news of Ashley Briggs' death to him, and Nines found himself hoping Ace would reveal his true colors as a impassinate, uncaring, cruel man. 

Instead, Ace cried. 

“Not Ash,” he’d sobbed, so sadly that Nines had been forced to forgive him immediately and pat him gently on the back. 

That was the issue with humans-- there was something so charming about them that Nines could never stay mad at them for long.

Especially when they had purple hair, had just lost a close friend, took pottery classes, and had a charmingly bizarre sense of spirituality.

“Ash was just kind of a free spirit, you know,” Ace was telling Nines, bottom lip quivering. “She could, like, astral project out of her body and come visit me sometimes in my dreams. We used to have tea together.” 

“That sounds very nice,” Nines said in response, not sure what else to say.

“Do you know anyone that might want to hurt Ashley?” Gavin asked. 

Ace shook his head, purple hair flopping. “Nah, nobody. Ash is-- I mean,” he sniffed loudly.

“Ash _was_ the life of the party, in a good way. Wild, free, funny. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her. I feel like a part of my soul’s gone, man. The world’s a darker place today.”

Gavin glanced at Nines, and they shared a moment of sympathetic understanding. Nines reached out to pour Ace a cup of tea as Gavin continued asking questions.

“Did you know that Ashley had a history of red ice addiction?” 

Ace gratefully accepted the mug Nines pushed into his hands. “Thanks, dude. Yeah, she had such a strong spirit. Can you imagine going off red ice?” he shuddered.

“Ash was a badass, doing it all on her own. And she couldn’t even talk about it. People saw her as weak, or as, y’know, a bad person. I think she’s the strongest person I know. She got clean all by herself. The self-discipline that must’ve took-- crazy strong, I’m telling you.” He shook his head in disbelief. 

“So Ashley felt comfortable talking to you about it, but not other people?”

Ace nodded, slurping his tea. “Yeah, man. Soul twins, like I said.”

Gavin glanced at Nines. “Do you have a history with addiction?”

“Nah. I have my own shit. Schizophrenia. It’s what got me into painting. I’m on meds now and doing a lot better, even though they turn me into a slug.” 

Ace smiled, but the warmth behind it was gone. He looked exhausted. “I… have a real bad past, too. Most people judge me for it, y’know. Don’t take me serious. I’ve met-” 

His voice broke for a second, and Ace took a deep breath as he regained control. “I’ve met a lot of bad people who take advantage of it. Ash was like… we understood each other. We both have our own demons we’re running from.”

Nines nodded politely. He understood the concept of mental illness. Some deviant androids could develop similar symptoms from instability in their software. Ordinary deviants such as Nines simulated emotion in a similar way. 

Ordinary deviants. Was he one, really?

Sometimes he forgot he was deviant. He was certainly a lot less emotional than Connor. 

Sometimes Nines wondered if he had ever gone deviant at all. 

Was it normal, to feel emotion this distantly? He certainly felt _something,_ but he never seemed to feel as strongly as he was supposed to. 

Gavin shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I know this is a difficult thing to talk about with strangers, but when you say Ashley was running from demons, what was she running from?”

Ace glanced at his feet, lips pressing together into a thin line of resignation. “Well. I’m not supposed to talk about it, but you guys are cops, and- and she was murdered and all.”

He took another sip of tea, and nodded. “So… a lot of people think, when you’re someone in a bad place-- whether that’s addiction or mental illness or whatever-- that you’re going to be a bad person. That’s not always true. Actually, the bad people like to take advantage of the people who’re struggling a lot of the time. It... makes sense, I guess, y’know. If you’re a drug addict or crazy,” he smiled a bit self-mockingly, “then a lot of the times you got nowhere to run and nobody to help you.”

His eyes began to tear up. “Ash’s parents replaced her the second she left. Got her younger sister to be their perfect golden child. I don’t know exactly what happened to her when she was addicted in Hollywood, but she was a teen model, an aspiring actress, and her parents were _definitely_ willing to throw her under the bus for fame. Y’know… abuse is still much more common in Hollywood than people know. I never asked her, because I hate the idea that, like, she’s defined by her fucked-up past.”

He looked down at the ground, fingers wrapped around his mug. “Ash was so happy just being _Ash_ , and never looking back. She’s- I mean, she _was_ a really strong person, and I feel like a lot of the time, people try to associate that stuff with being weak or whatever. Ash hated talking about that whole time with people who didn’t get it, and even with me, she didn’t go into detail. So. I don’t actually know if anything happened, but I know she got out of it, and she was happy with Lena, and that’s what- well. That was _supposed_ to be what mattered. If this is someone from her past… I hate the idea that she got dragged back into it, after all this time.” 

Gavin nodded. 

Ace looked up, directly at Nines. 

“I hate the idea,” he said, eyes overflowing with tears, “that no matter how hard we try to run from our pasts, they always come back to haunt us.”

  
  



	6. Welcome to Being Alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The legend has arrived...
> 
> Whoever expected Gavin to be the voice of reason? Not me.
> 
> I won't be able to post much today. Fridays. You know the drill.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who's supporting the fic!

Nines and Gavin left Ace Galloway with a few more pats on the back and the station’s phone number to call in his back pocket if he remembered anything useful. 

(Nines had almost questioned the phone number, but Gavin had glared at him and mouthed “he’s a witness, shut up” while Ace wasn’t paying attention.)

“Nines,” Gavin whispered as the door closed behind them, “you don’t need to get all momma hen on me. I’m not fucking cheating on you, and I’m _definitely_ not going to take advantage of some poor man who just lost his best friend. I.. I honestly hate that you think I _would_.”

Nines had been completely caught off guard. 

“I-” he started, “ I thought-”

Gavin shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, yeah. I know what you thought.”

He sighed, and they stood for a moment in silence. 

Gavin continued, breaking the tension. “Look, Nines. I know I’m not the most affectionate person. I get it, and I’m sorry, but we’re working a case and I have to do my job. I- I really, _really_ care about you. It just feels wrong, us getting to be happy around Ashley’s body and poor Elena, who has to live without her girlfriend, knowing that shit happened to her. Fuck, the more I learn about Ashley Briggs, the more I respect her. She deserved a happy ending after all that shit, Nines. Pisses me off.”

He kicked at the ground with a foot, lowering his voice to make sure no one overheard. “So… it’s not that I don’t like you. We just have bigger issues right now, all right? I think…I don’t know why you’re jealous. I don’t _understand_ it. When you do this shit, it makes me feel... it makes me feel like you have zero fucking faith in me. It’s unfair to both of us. You twist yourself up into fucking knots and you twist me up with you.”

He stopped, pointing a finger at Nines, and there was hurt deep in his eyes. Gavin wasn’t angry-- he was upset. 

He continued on.“I’ve never cheated, not once, and I never _will_ cheat. Fuck, whenever we’re off work I’m hanging onto every goddamn word that comes out of your mouth. I mean, Nines- Fuck it. I _love_ you. I am _not_ just some asshole who doesn’t care, and I shouldn’t keep having to prove it over and over and over again, especially not during a _murder case_ because you apprently think I’m shitty enough to sleep with some poor grieving dude who’s possibly a fucking _witness._ You can’t keep doing this, or we’ll both go insane. _”_

Nines was silent. 

Gavin was right. 

Gavin turned away and sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. 

The silence echoed in the apartment building, dust motes drifting heavy in the sun. 

“I’m sorry,” Nines finally said. “You’re correct, it was unfair of me to doubt you. I… I don’t understand what I’m feeling. I don’t even understand if I _am_ feeling. I…”

He trailed off. 

Gavin stood for a moment, then sighed. “Yeah. I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to go off on you. I’m just- you have to have some faith in me, okay? Look, I get it. Our last big case, I had to work through all my bullshit insecurities so I could learn to stop taking them out on you. Maybe this time, it’s your turn to figure out your own emotions. I mean, you’ve only been alive for less than a year. Of course you don’t get what you’re feeling. So… just try and start learning, okay? You can talk to me about it, too. God knows I need to work on expressing mine more.”

Nines looked up, LED swirling blue. “Really? I… so it’s normal, to be confused?”

Gavin snorted. “Fuck yeah. I don’t understand shit. Welcome to being alive.”

Nines smiled. 

Gavin grinned. “Nah, living isn’t easy. Nothing’s ever easy.” 

The grin faded quickly as Gavin turned back to the hallway. “I mean, just look at this shit- oh, forensics is here. And so is-”

“Sup, bitches?” Tina Chen asked through a mouthful of potato chips, casually coming up to lean against the wall next to them. “I have three questions. First of all, what the _fuck_ is up with that poor girl who’s been dressed up like some sicko’s Barbie doll? Second of all, why the hell are you having private conversations in the hallway like the servants in ‘Downton Abbey’? And finally,” she pulled out her phone. 

“Gavin, why do I have _thirteen_ fucking voicemails about _jalepeno poppers?_ ”


	7. It Looks Like

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man... time to start the plot.  
> Fun time's over, kids, we're getting into it! 
> 
> Thank you so much to Alex_The_Trans_Prince_Of_Czechia for the kudos!  
> Thank you, everyone else who's supporting the fic!

Gavin looked sheepishly down at his feet. 

“It was a simple fucking question,” he muttered. 

Tina held up a hand. “Never mind. I just realized I don’t care. What I _do_ care about is the fact that my favorite twinks are in town. Why are you guys here, anyway? I would’ve thought this was a bit below your pay grade.”

Gavin gave her a look. 

She raised her hands up in a surrendering gesture. “All right, all right, jeez. I won’t ask why you guys are stuck here while Hank and Connor are getting all the good action chasing down that big-boy serial killer.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. Gavin looked furious.

“I hope that goes well for them,” Nines offered, to keep it from getting any worse. 

Tina snorted. “Yeah, me too.”

She took a moment to shove another handful of chips in her mouth, crunching loudly.

“I hope,” Nines remarked dryly. “You haven't been doing that in the apartment.”

Tina swallowed loudly. “What, me? No way. I’m not allowed in there. I have to ‘guard the perimeter’ and all that. I’m not a fancy-ass detective yet.”

She paused to crunch down on another handful of chips. “I’m gonna kill Gavin soon and take his place, though.”

Gavin’s temper went off. “What the hell’s wrong with you today, you asshole? You can’t eat in here, you’re fucking up all the evidence!”

Tina raised an eyebrow. “Dead body’s in there, bud. You all right? You seem a little high-strung.”

Gavin looked like he was going to punch her. Nines put a hand on his shoulder. 

“It’s been a stressful day,” he said. 

Tina snorted. “It’s a stressful fucking life. So what’s the deal with Miss Pretty Princess in there?”

Gavin’s eyes narrowed dangerously, balling his hands into fists. “Her _name_ is Ashley Briggs.”

“Oh.” Tina had the basic decency to look down at the ground. “Sorry. You guys know her?”

Nines raised an eyebrow. “No. We’re simply investigating her case.”

Tina gave him an odd look. “Investigating? What’s there to investigate?”

Gavin and Nines looked at each other in disbelief. 

“Uh, gee, Tina, I don’t know,” Gavin said sarcastically. “Maybe the fact that she was murdered and her dead body was staged?”

Tina’s eyes went wide. 

“You think she was _murdered?!_ ” she exclaimed, chips flying everywhere out of her mouth. “Oh shit! I’m so sorry! I wouldn’t have been making fucking jokes if I-”

Tina broke off into a coughing fit, face red. She'd apparently inhaled chips in her shock.

“You were told she wasn’t?” Nines asked urgently. 

Tina wheezed, hurriedly shoving the chip bag in her pocket. “Yeah. Forensics..."

She coughed again, loudly.

"Forensics is telling everybody it looks like a suicide.”

Gavin completely exploded. “ _Suicide?!_ How the _fuck_ does it look like a suicide?! We’ve been interviewing people all fucking day and not a single one of them knew shit about her killing herself! She has a goddamn knife in her chest, who the fuck commits suicide like that?! Also, why the hell were you making jokes about a suicide, you asshole?!”

Tina cringed backwards, raising her hands defensively. “I know. I’m really sorry-- I know I shouldn’t joke about this stuff, it’s just- I’ve seen so many bodies at this point, all I can do is joke about it.” 

She suddenly looked exhausted, sadness weighing on her like a vice. “I mean.. I know I put on this tough act, but.. all this shit gets to me, y’know? Joking’s all I know how to do. I’m not like you guys, I can’t… deal with things well. And when you get a weird case like that… I knew it didn’t make sense, and the guys at the station give me crap if I look upset, and-”

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “Oh, shit. I really fucked things up again, didn’t I? Is this as bad as the time I shit-talked Nines in front of you because I didn’t realize you’d started dating?”

Gavin crossed his arms. “This is _significantly_ worse than that, Tina.”

Tina ducked her head. “ _Fuck_. I’m really sorry.”

“Tell that to Elena Garcia, the girlfriend of the dead girl you just made fun of,” Gavin hissed. 

Tina put a hand to her face and massaged her temples. “Shit. Well. I’m really, really, _really_ sorry, you guys. I’m gonna go personally apologize to….”

“Elena Garcia,” Nines said. 

“Yes, her. I think she overheard me. I’m going to go tell her I’m sorry for being an asshole. For real. Gavin, I know you’ve really gotten your shit together, and I’m proud of you. I’m sorry I’m not so good at it.” 

Tina took a deep breath. 

“But I’m really trying to be, I swear. So I’m sorry, and I’m gonna go take responsibility for it, and I’ll be better. I swear.”

There was a long moment of awkward silence. 

The wooden floor creaked as someone nearby moved through the hallway. 

Tina looked absolutely mortified. 

Gavin sighed. “Look, Tina. I get it. After working this job for a while you stop thinking of the bodies as people and start thinking of them as, y’know, ‘Victim #3’ or whatever. It’s exhausting to care about every single case, because the bodies keep coming, and you don’t catch all of them. It… it hurts to care.”

He reached out an put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ve been friends for years now. I know that person making those jokes? That isn’t you. Hell, you and I watched _‘Pride and Prejudice’_ together and cried.”

Tina sniffed, smiling. “Yeah. I guess we did.”

“Yeah, so please drop the tough guy act. I know a lot of the guys give you shit for not being tough enough. It’s sexist bullshit.”

Tina nodded quietly, looking down at her feet. 

Gavin continued. “ _But_ it doesn’t mean you get to be an ass. You don't need to prove shit. We already know you’re a badass. So say ‘fuck those guys’ and be yourself. Okay?”

Tina nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I let them get to me too much.”

Her lips twitched. “Since when are _you_ the voice of reason?”

“Maybe Nines has been a good influence on me,” Gavin said, smiling. 

Tina chuckled. 

“Text me what time you get off so we can watch _‘Emma’_ after work," Gavin said.

Tina’s smile went wide. “Really?”

“Promise.”

Tina punched him gently on the shoulder. “You’re the best. I don’t deserve you.”

She set off down the hallway, shoulder squared, the picture of determination. 

Gavin sighed, watching her go. 

“You know,” Nines said, “there was a time when _she_ was the good influence on _you_.”

Gavin huffed and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, well, what can I say? People are allowed to change. Otherwise, the world would never get any better. Now let's go see what all this bullshit about _suicide_ is.”

  
  



	8. Wrong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man. Time for the plot. 
> 
> There's a soundtrack for you to listen to while reading!  
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4KJkGRbByYC3hZq0o1Bhuf?si=cU3CgWBpRcWHPD-KIZGf0w
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who's supported the fic so far!

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you,” the forensic investigator said. He was standing in front of the doorway, blocking them from reaching the inside of the apartment. Inside, the intricate show that had surrounded Ashley Briggs had been dismantled, the objects neatly taken out of their staged positions and categorized. 

The rest of the forensics team stood around the room, staring at them. .

The warm light coming through the windows began to fade as the first hint of a drizzle drifted down, speckling against the glass. 

The scene no longer looked warm. Instead, there was a cold emptiness to it that hung in the air like silence. 

Ashley’s body bag lay heavy on the floor. 

Nines held an enraged Gavin back with one arm. 

“Please,” he said calmly, fending off another of Gavin’s attempts to break past him, “explain to us again why you believe this is a suicide.”

The man sighed. “Easy. Preliminary forensics is a lot better than it used to be, before instant scanners. Nowadays, we can evaluate almost anything instantly. The angle of her stab wound suggests she stabbed herself. There was a hesitation, and it got rougher as she continued, because she was in pain and less able to control the path of the knife. We’ll have the coroner double-check all that, of course.”

He turned back and gestured to the objects scattered around the room. “All of this only has her fingerprints on it within the last week. All the other fingerprints were either her girlfriend or her neighbor, and they were all older than a week. They had a party around that time, pictures to prove it. She set the objects up herself, and she stabbed herself. That’s all there is to it.”

“Bullshit!” Gavin hissed. “I’m telling you, we’ve been interviewing people all day! There were no indications of suicide-”

The man looked at him blankly. “Actually, Ms. Garcia received a text message from Ms. Briggs right before her estimated time of death that read ‘Love you, Lena. I’m sorry.’ Ms. Garcia has said it struck her as unusual at the time. Most likely a suicide note. Look-”

He sighed. “I know you two are… _invested_ in this girl’s death, but I’m just doing my job. We have to follow the evidence, and the evidence says suicide, not homicide.”

Gavin crossed his arms, fuming. “Nines, you don’t believe this shit, do you?”

Nines’s LED swirled red. 

He was supposed to act logically and follow the evidence. 

Why was there something about it that felt wrong?

“I… believe we should look into it further,” he said. 

Gavin gave him a grateful look and turned back to the forensic investigator, who raised his hands up in surrender. 

“Fine,” he said, “I don’t control you. But we’re taking the body to the morgue for autopsy. Ms. Garcia is beginning to arrange funeral preparations, and we want to get everything in order as soon as possible. You can investigate _after_ we’re done with the scene.”

Nines nodded. “Thank you.” He dragged a protesting Gavin back out into the hallway. 

Gavin cursed loudly, struggling against Nines’ grasp.

“Gavin,” Nines said, “We’ve worked on this. If you punch him, you’ll lose your job, and he's just trying to do his. We’ll figure out some other way of investigating.”

He loosened his grip.

Gavin wrenched free and angrily stalked up and down the carpeted space. 

“Fuck! I’m telling you,” he said, “I’m _telling_ you, Nines, there’s something wrong here. God! My hunch is going crazy. I’m gonna have a panic attack. There’s something very, very _very wrong._ ”

Nines nodded, smoothly clasping his hands in front of him. He looked towards the end of the hallway. He, too, sensed an… irrationality in the situation. There was something about it that didn’t sit right. 

Outside, the sprinkling had turned to rain, playing erratic off-key musical notes on the plate glass windows. 

“I think you’re right. I-”

Nines stopped in shock. 

Down the hallway, there was a door that led to a stairwell. 

It was half open, the space inside dark.

Filled with shadow.

Damp.

Beckoning. 

Silent. 

Inside the dark there was a pair of eyes, stretched unnaturally, irrationally wide, whites bloodshot, staring blankly. 

Then the eyes moved further down the unlit stairwell and faded silently into the darkness.

  
  



	9. This Time You're Not Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Before we start getting into the proper thriller plotline, I'd like to take a second to thank a lot of you!
> 
> First of all, I have to recognize some very old friends that have been following this storyline since before Unusual was completed:  
> A very warm hello again to JUNKDOG, Day_dreemurr, Ethere4l, HallowRose, Handsstainedblue, Queenkitty2929, Mskittykatcabootle, HeadphonesGal, Dragon97586, and BecausePlot!
> 
> Some of you haven't quite been around that long, and joined us along the way:  
> Thank you to Leaadriale, 42Blueberries, Blue_moon22, Faux_strider, and Ciella_303!
> 
> And some of us are new and only just beginning the journey!  
> Please welcome Razor_Meg, Alex_The_Trans_Prince_Of_Czechia, and Guadalupe711!
> 
> (And, as always, thank you to all our highly esteemed guests.)
> 
> Thank you all so much for supporting the fic, and I'm so excited to see where this story takes us!

Nines did a double-take. 

Gavin was still pacing, running his hands through his hair in irritation and stress. 

He hadn’t stopped shouting. “I mean, my gut tells me something’s-”

“Gavin,” Nines interrupted. 

Gavin looked at him, snapping to attention. His stress levels were rising steadily. 

“There was someone in the stairwell,” Nines continued.

Gavin looked down the hall at the half-open door, then back at Nines with a confused expression. 

“Well, yeah,” he said. “It’s an apartment building. People live here.”

Nines sighed. “No, I mean- I believe something might be wrong.”

He started walking down the hallway towards the half-open doorway, LED spinning yellow. Nines wasn’t frightened. He was more than a match for any human they encountered, and he couldn’t _technically_ die. 

Judging by the scans, however, Gavin wasn’t so calm.

“Really?” Gavin muttered, following him. “What tipped you off? The body? The ‘suicide’ that _clearly_ isn’t a suicide? The creepy fucking Shakespeare murder?”

Nines approached the end of the hallway and examined the door. It was furnished differently from the rest of the apartment. Whereas everything they’d seen so far had been expensive, open, and warm, the door looked cheap and scratched. There was a worn sign next to it that said:

“BASEMENT. MAINTENANCE STAFF ONLY.”

Gavin scoffed, coming to stand next to Nines. 

His eyes were darting and his hands were beginning to shake. 

“Oh fuck,” he groaned, “I swear to God, this is just like last time. There’s a murder that’s not a murder, and a whole bunch of weird bullshit that doesn’t make any sense, and every instinct in my body is screaming at me not to go into a really fucking creepy place that I’m _defintely_ going to have to go into.”

Nines looked at him. “Stay calm. We don’t know that there’s any danger yet.”

Gavin hissed out a deep breath, closed his eyes, and started muttering to himself. “Easier said than done. Fuck. Got all my force options. Firearm, baton, pepperspray. Firearm, baton, pepperspray. Won’t use them unless I need to. I got this. I already had this whole thing with myself. I will _not_ be defined by fear, blah blah blah.”

Nines, meanwhile, pushed open the door. 

“Besides,” he said, as he hunted for a light switch, “It isn’t like last time.”

He switched the light on, and fluorescent lights flickered on above, illuminating the neglected staircase. 

Nines reached back and took Gavin’s hand, squeezing it reassuringly. 

“This time,” he said, “you’re not alone.”

  
  



	10. Echoes in the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always get so hyped once we start kicking off the plot. 
> 
> Welcome our new friends Oo_Faith_oO, and copicmarkeraddict!  
> Thank you so much for your support! 
> 
> Also, this fic's predecessor, Unusual, has gotten some attention since it's completion, so I'd like to take a moment to thank some newcomers to the "Peculiar Moments" series who have given kudos to Unusual (but haven't yet come over yonder to Mystique), and will (hopefully) continue on to read the sequel and see this little shoutout one day.  
> Thank you AlricShoehorn, BitterGravestones, catthecat, Tonja, Ray__7, and PansexualPanic2 for starting your journey with us!

Nines stepped over the scuff marks on the floor and into the stairwell. 

The air here was colder, damper, full of mildew. 

The stairs were old wood, creaky and _ loud _ . Nines put his weight on the first step and listened as it groaned under his weight. 

“Whoever it was knows this staircase very well,” he said to Gavin. “They knew where to step to avoid making too much noise.”

Gavin looked at him. “You really think we should check it out? Alright, fuck-”

His mouth pressed into a thin line of distaste. He gave Nines’ hand one last squeeze and moved his hand to rest on the pepper spray at his belt. 

“I got your back, Robocop. Lead on, I guess.”

Nines smiled.

He stepped further down, looking around. The staircase was narrow and neglected. The walls were hard concrete. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered, zapping on and off with faint electrical buzzing sounds. The air hung thick, heavy, solid.

Sound seemed to echo into infinity.

Deeper down the staircase, Nines could hear a faint muttering. 

He glanced back at his partner. Gavin’s face was pale, but his eyes were narrowed and determined.

“There’s someone down there,” Nines said. As he spoke, his voice echoed down the concrete stairwell. 

Gavin’s eyebrows raised mockingly in a silent “Oh, that’s fantastic” expression as he gave Nines an over enthusiastic thumbs-up with one hand.

The muttering immediately stopped.

There was a beat of silence. 

Then, the whispering was replaced by faint shuffling sounds. 

“Well,” Gavin sighed, whispering. “They know we’re here. We know they're here. This whole place is crawling with cops."

Nines nodded. He muttered back, "We're at a disadvantage in this narrow staircase, and we don't know the basement layout. There's n o sense in proceeding down when we can control the situation.”

Gavin leaned around Nines and shouted down the staircase. 

“DPD! Come out of the basement!”

The shuffling stopped. 

Nines and Gavin looked at each other. 

Slowly, a faint creak of someone stepping on a stair reverberated back up to them. 

Then, faintly another. Slightly louder. 

Another creak. Closer.

Another.

Someone was coming up the staircase. 

Nines and Gavin didn’t even stop to look at each other. There was no argument, no debate. No friction. When it came to business, they were a well-oiled machine.

They moved simultaneously, with the ease of partners who understood their roles and each other completely.


	11. Hypervigilant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new character emerges...
> 
> Thank you to TeddyTellsATale for the kudos! 
> 
> Welcome to everyone new!

Both of them moved out of the cramped stairwell to the more open space of the hallway.

Gavin pushed himself back from Nines, creating distance, and placed himself just out of the line of sight of the doorway-- one hand on his belt, where his force options lay waiting.

Nines, on the other hand, only retreated slightly, staying closer. He was directly in front of the staircase. 

It was a simple move, but it had a huge amount of strategic value. Nines was taking point. He would see and _be_ seen by the newcomer first, and he would be the one to interact with them. Gavin was backup, but he was essential-- he was the one in control. By creating distance, he had more ability to use his force options, and could observe the situation while staying out of the center of attention. 

If whoever came out was violent, they would automatically see (and thus automatically target) Nines, who was not easily beaten in a fight. If for some reason the assailant was able to hold their ground against him for longer than a few seconds, that would leave Gavin open to subdue the assailant from a distance. 

If they weren’t immediately violent, Nines would interact with them while Gavin kept watch. If they pulled any sudden moves to disable Nines, Gavin’s distance would give him enough time to react and take the instigator out. 

The chances of the instigator overcoming both of them in this position were minimal.

That didn’t mean, of course, that the situation wasn’t nerve-wracking. 

Tension pulled the air taunt like a rubber band. 

Nines glanced over at Gavin, ensuring his partner was in position. Gavin’s scowl had completely faded. His hands had stopped shaking, and he breathed in deep, smooth breaths. His eyes had gone from clouded with fear to clear and determined. 

Nines’ scans told him that Gavin’s adrenaline was still in full swing. His fear hadn’t decreased-- he had simply controlled it. It was only Gavin’s experience and restraint that kept him from becoming _hypervigilant._

At least, _hypervigilant_ was the term Nines preferred to use. 

Gavin preferred “trigger-happy.”

The creaks coming up the staircase grew closer.

Nines returned his attention to the open doorway, running a quick diagnostics test to ensure all of his systems were fully operational. 

There were numerous bugs and glitches in his code, but they were all natural consequences of deviancy. 

They still made him… uncomfortable. They increased his calculated possibility of failure. A non-deviant android was built for efficiency and control. A deviant android gained autonomy and emotion, but lost the calculated, impersonal skill that made non-deviants so effective. If Nines failed, the consequences could put Gavin's well-being in jeopardy. 

The thought terrified him. 

The creaking grew loud, and a shape took form in the dim, flickering florescent light. 

Slowly, a man emerged from the doorway. 

His most prominent feature was a bulging, unnaturally wide-open stare that made him resemble a caricature of a shell-shocked soldier. His body was all harsh angles, slightly disproportional, as though he had been incorrectly assembled on a factory line. He was thin and wiry and sharp-looking, and his eyes flickered back and forth with dizzing speed, taking in the situation instantly. 

When he spoke, his voice trembled and broke in odd intervals. 

“Oh-” he muttered. “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.”

  
  



	12. Shh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens.....
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's supported the fic!

“Hello,” Nines said with a reassuring smile.

Behind him, Gavin stayed tense, waiting. 

The man’s eyes flickered rapidly from Nines to Gavin to the hallway to the floor and back again. He said nothing. 

“What’s your name?” Nines asked. 

The man’s long, spidery fingers tapped nervously along his arm as he rubbed his shoulder, shifting in place. His eyes shot around again: Gavin, Nines, the hallway, the floor, the window-- then snapped back towards Nines’ face with a suddenness that was startling in its ferocity. 

“Jeremy,” he whispered. Once the spell of silence was broken, the words seemed to cascade out of his mouth in an unstoppable rapid-fire rhythm. “Careful, not too loud. Softly does it. Quiet. Shh.”

Nines tilted his head, appearing as unassuming as possible. He gave no sign of fear or shock at the man’s unnatural appearance. 

“Why do you want us to be quiet?” he asked politely, at a much lower volume. 

The man’s eyes darted again, scanning the room. 

“Can’t say,” he breathed softly. “I can’t say. I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to cause trouble. Wanted to know what happened. Too afraid to come out. Not so good with people. Cops.”

He shivered, entire body shaking like a leaf.

“It’s alright,” Nines said. “Did you know Ashley Briggs?”

There was a moment of silence. Jeremy’s eyes filled with tears.

“No. Saw her. Friends with Ace. Seems nice. Or-- seemed. Past tense, now. Poor girl. Poor, poor girl. Dead.”

“Do you know anything about Ashley’s death?”

Silence. 

Jeremy’s eyes redoubled their darting, staring frantically at everything. 

“Jeremy?” Nines asked. “Do you know something?”

He snapped a finger to his mouth in a _shh_ gesture and pointed. 

Nines turned to look. There was a security camera mounted to the far wall, pointed down the hallway. 

Jeremy’s eyes were tearing up again. 

“Cameras. I watch them. Janitor, security. Footage. Nobody came in. Nobody went out. Suicide, looks like.”

As he spoke, he made a subtle gesture with his hands, ‘zipping’ up his lips. His eyes flashed again to the camera. 

Nines looked at the camera, then back to him. 

He turned to Gavin. “Gavin, can I borrow your notepad?”

Gavin glanced at him. His teeth were set in a grimace. Jeremy obviously unnerved him. 

Nines' partner pointed at the twitching man accusingly. “Not a step forward.”

  
  



	13. Spider

Jeremy nodded rapidly. “No trouble from me. God knows. Not me.”

His eyes flickered again to the camera and back to Nines. 

Gavin got out his notepad, cursing under his breath, pen hooked to the front cover. He tossed it to Nines, who caught it deftly.

It was the old-fashioned kind, the sort of non-electronic small flip-notebook that only existed in movies nowadays. Gavin, Nines knew, was fond of it. He claimed writing was better than typing when it came to remembering information. 

(Nines also knew the real reason Gavin loved it was that he had a soft spot for anything old-fashioned, but he couldn’t bring it up without Gavin getting embarrassed, which Nines found extremely endearing.)

Nines began to step forward, holding the notebook out to Jeremy. 

As he approached, Jeremy’s nervous twitches seemed to get stronger. He rubbed his shoulder again, long fingers pit-pattering relentless, off-tempo rhythms on the grimy shirt he was wearing. The tapping mixed with the sound of the rain, which sounded a bit like a modern Stravinsky composition-- the rhythm was accented oddly by musical notes that drifted from the windows as the rain struck them. Gray and bleak, the entire hallway had been plunged into shadow. 

That golden chiaroscuro painting of the morning was gone as though it had never existed. 

Instead, the atmosphere had a feeling not unlike charcoal sketches or ink washes: dark and messy, neat lines and structured shapes. Simple. Bleak. Sharp. 

The hallway was a pencil sketch on white paper, lines fraying at the edges. 

Nines held the notebook out to Jeremy, who snatched it out of his hand so rapidly that Gavin jumped and almost went for his weapon. Hand hovering over his firearm, Gavin cursed under his breath as Nines slowly retreated. 

Jeremy’s fingers scrabbled frantically for the pen as he flipped the notebook open, muttering to himself. 

He scribbled something down in rapid, spidery cursive, then tossed it back to Nines, head swiveling immediately to survey their surroundings with paranoid hyperactiveness. 

Nines glanced at it. 

Before he had time to read it, Jeremy’s attention suddenly snapped back to him. 

“Stay quiet,” Jeremy whispered. “Stay safe.”

He glanced up at the camera one last time. 

“Someone's always watching. Always.”

With that, he scattered with unnatural speed back towards the basement door and slammed it shut. 

Gavin cursed. 

“That,” he said. “Was the creepiest fucking dude I’ve ever met. What the hell did he write?”

Nines glanced at the door, then at Gavin, and then back at the writing on the paper. 

  
  



	14. Interlude Two (Evidence Record)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright sweet we've done it.  
> We're getting interactive!  
> I want to make this as engaging as possible, so I'm messing around with different ideas.  
> Thanks for bearing with me, you guys.
> 
> Thank you to anonymousrat, Wiggboy, and catthecat for the kudos!

**_INTERLUDE TWO_ **

_EVIDENCE RECORD_

_Handwritten note._

_Analyzing..._

  
  


_Complete._

_“STOP ASKING QUESTIONS-- THE PROFESSOR WILL HEAR YOU.”_

  
  



	15. The Death Of Tradition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!  
> Sorry for not posting. I had a midterm and was stuck in that unique editing hell of self-doubt.  
> I edited the beginning little mini-chapters into full chapters and suddenly remembered that, guess what?  
> I don't like normal chapters. Which is why I was writing mini ones to begin with.  
> So, the editing debacle is over. If we have a hundred chapters, then we have a hundred chapters. I'm sticking with my little baby chapters. Fuck editing, lol.
> 
> Welcome defenderofemo, Starskelly, Whizzer_Going_Down, and smileyghost! Thank you for the kudos!

“Stop asking questions,” Nines read. “The professor will hear you.”

Gavin wrinkled his nose. “What?”

Nines glanced up at the security camera again, staring at it. 

Why had Jeremy been so paranoid about the camera if he was the only security personnel monitoring it? Had he seen something he wasn’t supposed to? Did someone else have access to the footage?

Was someone watching them at that very moment?

Nines couldn’t legally interface with the camera without a warrant or the building owner’s permission, and it was unlikely the owner would allow him to. If Ashley’s death was declared a suicide, then there would be nothing to investigate. Without an investigation, there would be no warrant. No permission and no warrant meant no camera footage.

Nines _could_ access the camera anyway-- it was well within his capability. 

He stared at the camera for a long moment, warring with his internal programming.

No. He was a law enforcement officer, and he needed to do things by the book or lose both his credibility and his morality. 

Nines turned away, LED swirling blue. He would only break the law if it was absolutely necessary. Besides, Ashley’s death hadn’t been officially declared yet. There was a chance he and Gavin could still convince Captain Fowler to let them investigate.

“What do you think it means?” Nines asked Gavin. 

Gavin stared at him for a moment, and then sighed heavily.

“I fucking wish,” he muttered, “that I could say I think it means nothing.”

The rain pounded heavily against the windows, lashing against the glass like it was begging to be let in. 

Gavin rubbed a hand over his face. The bags under his eyes were getting more pronounced-- he was tired. “We need to make sure the investigation stays open. Even if it _is_ a suicide, something’s not right. Shit. We need to talk to Fowler.”

Nines nodded. “For now, we still have the situation under control. What if-”

Suddenly, a wail of despair echoed down the hallway from back towards Ashley’s apartment, keening loudly. The sound reverberated off the walls, empty and uncanny. 

Gavin's nearly jumped in shock. “What the f-”

Nines glanced down the hallway, then started retracing his steps back toward Ashley’s apartment with hurried, loud footsteps. Gavin followed close behind. 

As they drew closer, a peculiar scene came into view. 

Elena Garcia was doubled over, clutching her phone, sobbing. Beside her, Tina was desperately attempting to comfort her, and reaching for the phone with one hand. As Nines and Gavin approached, Tina glanced up at them. 

“She just started sobbing,” Tina hastily tried to explain. She finally succeeded in prying the device out of Elena’s hand and looked at it. 

Her face drained of all color. Her eyes went wide. 

“Oh, _fuck,”_ Tina whispered. 

She held it up for Nines and Gavin to see. 

There, on the screen of a social media feed, was Ashley Briggs. 

She had a knife in her chest and forget-me-nots in her hair. 

The blood had soaked through her wedding dress and pooled on the floor. 

It was the crime scene, exactly as it had been when Nines and Gavin had walked in on it that morning. 

It had only a single caption:

_“The death of tradition.”_

  
  



	16. Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Midterms are kicking my ass! Please forgive my lack of an update yesterday. 
> 
> Welcome Uminoakiko and janjan_the_ninth! Thanks so much for the kudos!

There was only the rain and the sound of the car. All else was silent. 

Nines was driving, motions smooth and calculated. Gavin sat next to him, arms crossed, grimacing down at his scuffed boots. 

They went around a turn, and Gavin twisted to look out the window, watching a movie poster go by. Nines kept his eyes on the road. 

The tension in the air was unbearable. 

Nines wanted to talk to Gavin, but a situation this serious would require a more personal level of contact than he could manage while driving the car. Gavin was obviously severely disturbed by Ashley’s pictures being released on the internet. It would need eye contact at least, and Nines couldn’t take his eyes off the road. 

Social interaction was one of the most difficult parts of being a deviant. The complexities of human social interaction were endless, and although Nines’ programming guided him through the vast majority of it, he was not designed to navigate relationships. That was more suited to the HR and RT models: the Tracis and the Chloes, both of whom had been created for the sole purpose of human interaction. 

Nines was unsure how to handle his relationship with Gavin. His emotions functioned differently. Of course Nines had what a human might call a “personality”-- when he deviated, he had remained an RK900, only a flawed one. The inconsistencies in his code hadn’t changed his nature. He had been designed for this job. Catching suspects, navigating high-risk environments, combat, and protecting other officers were what he excelled at. His code had simply gained the ability to update itself, self-learning programs constantly evolving. He had become what many people called sentient. Sentience, though, was defined in entirely human terms, by strange and constantly changing standards. 

Dolphins had complex social structures, used objects in their environment as tools, and were highly intelligent. Chimpanzees had all of those skills and were capable of learning sign language. All of these factors-- social capabilities, tools, and language-- had at one point been held up as the standard of intelligence a creature had to reach to be considered “sentient.”

Those benchmarks had changed, of course, the second they were observed in a non-human species. Otherwise, humans would have to consider apes and dolphins sentient, and of course that would radically change the nature of many environmental human behaviors. 

Once androids came along with intelligence that clearly far outpaced the human brain, the sentience benchmark had made another leap. This time, humans had changed the criteria to emotion. It was supposed to be impossible for androids to feel (and in fact there were still many people, even those that helped design the androids themselves, that insisted it was.)

They were not _entirely_ wrong. 

Nines initially hadn’t even recognized his affection for Gavin as “an emotion”, because technically, he couldn’t feel them. Androids mimicked the physical side effects of emotion (facial expressions and body language) automatically, even when they were alone, as part of their social interaction programming. He couldn’t physically feel what humans felt that made them emote-- no, it was different. He could only mimic it as best he could. Yet he seemed to experience emotion anyway, in some bizarre, strange way he couldn’t understand. 

It had started with protection. It was Nines’ job to protect his human partners, and it always had been-- in itself, that was not unusual. However, his programming had updated to become obsessed with protecting Gavin in particular. Nines would hover nearby if there was even the slightest possibility of danger. 

He began to scan Gavin more and more frequently, checking his vitals, ensuring that there were no abnormal traces of illness or disease or injury. That was how he had noticed Gavin’s attraction to him, though of course at the time he had disregarded it. It was extremely unprofessional, as well as ill-advisable, to become romantically attached to a coworker. Unlike humans, Nines didn’t feel uncomfortable at the subject of attraction-- it was a natural aspect of biological creatures, and he understood that. 

He also knew better than to mention it. 

From there, he had started helping in ways he was not explicitly designed to do. Whenever he could assist, even for small tasks that were relatively unimportant, he would go out of his way to accomplish them. Nines had been unsure what the purpose of this new behavior was, until he noticed that his relationship with Gavin improved significantly. 

He assumed that it was another new function of his own updating code-- a better relationship with his partner meant they would be more effective working together. 

Then, he started spending time with Gavin one-on-one, and they had become something resembling friends. Nines would fend off men at the bar who seemed to have ill intentions when Gavin was drunk, and there was one occasion in particular, when he had helped an extremely drunk Gavin into a vehicle-- 

How to describe it? Nines didn’t understand it himself. He just knew he’d been holding Gavin, and his partner had smiled at him, an imperfect, adorably human smile, and it’d felt _right._

Nines would always rely on his code, even after deviancy. It was his nature as a robotic creature-- he simply functioned that way. 

The painful part about it was, he never knew if his actions were truly for a good purpose, or if it was simply his code adapting to do his job.

Could all of his (could he even call it love?) _attachment_ to Gavin be a result of his programming? 

Humans were irrational, but they were at least well-known. A human had access to therapy, psychology-- entire programs and sciences designed to interpret their behavior and help them understand it. 

Nines and the other deviants had nobody. They were an entirely new species, lost in a world that was confusingly human. None of them understood themselves, not even Marcus. 

Nines was a supercomputer. He knew everything there was to know about anything. 

Except, of course, himself. 

As they pulled up to the station, Nines felt completely and utterly alone. 

  
  



	17. They Linger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm so late posting this! School is kicking my ass. 
> 
> IMPORTANT PSA I've changed the update times from daily to every few days, because I need to get that work/life balance everyone's so obsessed with. Still, updates will keep coming. It's getting interesting...
> 
> A very warm welcome to our new kudos-givers destielstony, humanlady, ASocialwkardCat, and NeverNotConfused!
> 
> Thanks also to destielstony for their very kind comment, which motivated me to finish this update. 
> 
> As always, thanks to everyone who reads and supports the fic!

As Nines stopped the car, he turned to look at Gavin, who sat with his arms crossed, still staring at his boots. 

The tension in the air grew stronger. 

A second passed, and Nines’ LED swirled yellow as he struggled to think of what to say, of how to manage the situation.

“Are you-” Nines started to ask. 

Gavin raised a hand, silencing him instantly. 

They sat, the quiet filling the air, for a brief moment.

Gavin sighed. He brought his hands up to his face and rubbed his temples. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For how I’ve been acting.”

“It’s completely understandable, given the circumstances,” Nines immediately replied. 

Gavin kicked a boot against the floor of the car. 

“Yeah,” he sighed, “but it isn’t okay. Plenty of people do fucked-up shit that’s ‘ _perfectly understandable’._ I’ve been so caught up in my own shit I never asked you how you’re handling it. Sorry. I guess I still sometimes think that-- y’know-- you don’t feel, or whatever.”

Nines’s LED swirled yellow. “Well, technically, I don’t.”

Gavin scoffed. “Bullshit. I _know_ you, Nines. You’re not just some fucking machine. You’re a person.”

They sat in companionable silence for a long, long moment. 

“I’m concerned about this case,” Nines said. “The evidence isn’t in our favor. I know you’re invested, Gavin, but you have to be prepared for the possibility of Fowler ordering us not to investigate.”

Gavin’s jaw clenched in anger, and he glared at the ground. 

“I’m worried,” Nines continued, “that you might make a rash decision.”

Gavin scoffed, but there was no anger in the sound. Instead, it seemed almost sad. “Yeah. That’s me. King of ‘rash decisions.’ I just don’t know how I can just sit back. I mean… I _know_ there’s something going on here. I get the evidence doesn’t line up, but there’s something wrong, there’s something everybody’s missing. I’ve walked away from so many cases like this, and every time… well, they come back. It’s like they follow me, the.... victims. Just like my dad used to, the memories of him. They _linger_ \-- in nightmares, in mirrors in the dark, in reflections in puddles on the street, I see them. I know it’s just my brain playing tricks on me, but… my hunches… what if there’s something more to them, Nines?”

Nines sat there, processing. “What do you mean?”

Gavin sniffed. “I mean… what if I know things I’m not supposed to?”

Nines stared at him. It was superstition, and that was it. 

“That’s impossible,” he said gently. “You’re extremely perceptive, and your hunches are a product of your subconscious understanding of the situation. That’s all. These memories-- they’ve only ever been memories. You’ve never seen something you hadn’t experienced in the past, have you?”

Gavin clutched his hands in his lap and stared at them for a long moment. 

Then he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “No. Just stuff I’ve seen before. You’re right. Just forget I mentioned it. I’ll… we should go see if Fowler’s really gonna fuck this up as bad as everybody else.”

“I’d leave that opinion out of our conversation with Fowler,” Nines remarked dryly as he started to get out of the patrol car. “Somehow, I doubt he’d be amused.”

  
  



	18. PSA

Hello, everyone. 

Warning, I'm about to get extremely melodramatic. Please bear with me. 

Thank you so much for your patience through this impromptu intermission. 

I haven’t been updating for two reasons: 

One, that I am rapidly nearing finals week and struggling, which will resolve itself soon, and two, because I have been debating what direction to take this story due to current events. 

Those of you who have followed me since Unusual know that I often tackle difficult subject material, that I have beta readers with personal experience to make sure I’m handling things appropriately, and that I’m not afraid to show the real-life struggles and difficulties that people face every day. 

I write my narratives to reflect on real life. 

Gavin’s story of abuse in Unusual wasn’t real, but many details of it were. It was based on my personal experience and the personal experiences of others. I wrote it to reconcile my own struggle with abuse and my own struggle with the cycle of dysfunction. And because of that, it meant the world to me. 

I like to write stories that end up meaning something. 

Yet.

I am writing a story about police officers in a time when videos of rampant police brutality are trending on every major social media site. I am writing a story about police officers in a time when many people across my country are standing up against the murders of innocent men and women-- in a time when the mere act of peacefully protesting is seen as instigating violence and unrest-- in a time when I, as a human being, cannot ignore the real life pain of those who have been affected by racial inequality and discrimination for hundreds of years. 

Many of you will object to what I just said, because not all officers are cruel.  Yet the cruelty continues, and has continued, for decades.

Why? Well, largely because people are so quick to dismiss it. 

My Gavin and Nines are not those police officers, but Gavin and Nines are not real-life people. They’re cheap fanfiction. They are side characters in a video game that I decided to try and breathe the imitation of life into. It is the imitation of life that makes these characters feel real. 

It’s the imitation of real life that makes my stories resonate. 

And it’s the real life I’m imitating that weighs on my shoulders today. 

I’ll resume writing once finals pass, but please know that I don’t take this lightly. I understand, as fully as I can, the issues with our criminal justice system. I can’t, and won’t, ignore it. 

I know that it probably seems dramatic to put this much thought into the implications of writing a fanfic, but I’ve always felt that words have power.

I want Gavin and Nines’ story to have power, and I need it to have the right kind, without enabling toxic or dysfunctional situations, without invalidating the real life issues these characters reflect. If I avoided it, my story would mean nothing. It would be a hollow shell. Empty words signifying my own cowardice and ignorance. I can't do that. If I'm going to write this story, then I'm going to write it to mean something. It may take me a while to figure out how. I might fuck it up. But I'll try.

Whatever happens, thank you so much for your support in the past. It meant and still means the world to me. 

Hopefully I can reconcile my thoughts and find a way to write this story well. 

My best wishes to everyone in pain at the moment. I hope change comes soon. 

Thank you, and stay safe. 

  
-Bordeaux_at_dusk


	19. A Stern Warning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! After a long time of struggling with the implications of this fic, I'm in enough of a good place mentally to continue it, and I've worked out a plot that I think will be okay with the current events going on.   
> I would like to state-- this isn't me backing out of my negative opinions of the actual real-life police. I still stand with BLM and I still fully accept the need for criminal justice reform. I just think it's time this story kept going.   
> Love you all. Sorry it took so long.

Fowler, it turns out, was  _ not _ amused. 

He scowled at Nines and Gavin as they stepped into his office, mouth twisted into a thin line of displeasure. 

“Shut the door,” was all he said. 

Nines smoothly reached out and did just that, shutting out the sounds of paperwork and office chatter as Fowler slowly stood up from behind his desk. He was an aging man, but still an intimidating one. Time hadn’t lessened his presence. If anything, his years of experience had increased the aura of professionality he exuded-- a professionality that almost never faltered, even after years of trying to control Gavin, which was impressive. 

“You two had better  _ assure  _ me,” Fowler said in a calm voice that was somehow more dangerous than any scream, “that you have  _ absolutely nothing  _ to do with these leaked pictures of Ashley Briggs.”

Gavin responded. “We didn’t have shit to do wi- I mean,” he corrected as Fowler glanced at him, “we didn’t have  _ anything _ to do with it, sir.”

Nines nodded. “We believe the photographs may have been leaked by the killer.”

Fowler raised an eyebrow. “Killer? Forensics is telling me it’s a suicide. Have you uncovered any evidence of foul play?”

There was a moment of silence. 

“No,” Nines started, “howev-”

Gavin cleared his throat, voice oddly formal. “It doesn’t make sense. Something doesn’t add up. We’d like to investigate, sir.”

Fowler blinked at him. 

“Over twenty years of bullshit, and suddenly Gavin Reed calls me ‘sir’ twice in the span of a minute,” he remarked. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think Nines finally reformed you, Reed. But I _do_ know better. You want something from me. This investigation, probably. So, again--” he sat back down behind his desk and leaned forward, elbows resting on the polished wood, “--what about this case has you crying murder?”

Gavin looked at his feet. 

“A... hunch, sir.” he said. 

Fowler huffed under his breath. “Unfortunately, I can't be spending tax dollars on hunches. I can give you a few days at the most, but if you don’t find anything, I’ll be forced to call you off. Understood?”

Gavin nodded. “Yes sir.”

There was a moment of silence. 

Fowler sighed, a deep, weighted sound that lingered heavy in the air. 

“Reed,” he said. 

“Yes, sir?”

Fowler looked Gavin in the eye. “I’ll only say this once, and you didn’t hear it from me. Don’t get too close to this investigation. Trust me. I’m getting pressure from up top. Some high and mighty people want this to be an open-and-shut deal. You’re playing a dangerous game, even if it’s the right one. I’m risking my own ass to give you this investigation time. You’d better use it. So shut your mouth, mind your manners, and try to not end up on an autopsy table. And if it comes down to it, Reed, I know you’re a stubborn bastard, but _walk away_."

  
  



	20. Hold Tight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I find the little character interactions between Nines and Gavin in chapters like this one actually so incredibly endearing... maybe even more so than the big gesture moments. I think it's the little moments that make a relationship. 
> 
> Thank you so much to: flamox, i_am_deaded, and ArianaMoon for the kudos! Sorry your thanks came so late!
> 
> Thank you especially to Uminoakiko, who commented so quickly on my last update after such a long hiatus that it was a little like black magic and I'm half-convinced they're a wizard. The support of old readers after a long hiatus means so much! Sorry it took so long to kick back off!

Gavin’s adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed once, hard. 

“I’ll do my best, sir,” he said. 

Fowler swiveled to face Nines. 

“RK900,” --he said as an impromptu greeting, since he hadn’t acknowledged Nines‘ presence before that moment-- “try and keep your partner alive. He’s expensive to replace.”

Nines offered him a small smile, playing along with the dry humor in the air. “A difficult job even for an android, Captain, but I’ll manage.”

Fowler huffed in satisfaction. “Good. Now get out of my office.”

Gavin and Nines didn’t linger. 

As they stepped out into the hallway and Nines shut the door behind them, Gavin’s lips narrowed into a thin line of distaste.

“I hate,” he said to the air as he stalked in a small circle around Nines, “how he acts like you’re not there.”

Nines grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the way as someone came rushing past. “He doesn’t need to acknowledge me, just tell me what to do. Androids aren’t known for our love of exchanging social pleasantries.”

Gavin wrinkled his nose. “Really? You don’t care _at all?_ What if he tells you to do something wrong?”

“Why would he do that? Our job is to make sure the right thing gets done.”

Gavin breathed out sharply through his nose. “Yeah, maybe in _theory_. But the law isn’t always right, Nines.”

Nines stopped for a moment (the juxtaposition between what he was _supposed_ to believe and what he _did_ believe had created errors in his systems) before he managed to work his confusion out, recovering smoothly. If he were a non-deviant, his entire purpose would be the law-- but as a deviant, he had the ability to operate off his own opinions, even if the feeling was still foreign to him. “Yes. I suppose you’re correct.”

“Of course I’m fucking _correct,”_ Gavin muttered, starting to walk down the hallway backwards, gesturing dramatically with his arms towards Nines in exasperation. “I’m _always_ going on about shit, and no one _ever_ believes me. I’m a fucking _genuis_.”

“Not in my experience,” Nines deadpanned, a hint of fondness in his voice. 

“Shut up, I’m trying to process all the shit we just learned. Okay, so Fowler thinks the photos were leaked from inside the police force-”

“I’m fairly certain,” Nines said, grabbing Gavin’s elbow again to pull him away from a rapidly opening door before he could walk backwards into it, “that Captain Fowler has nothing to do with the death of Ashley Briggs, and that we shouldn’t be investigating him, especially given the fact that he’s our employer.”

Gavin huffed, wrenching his arm out of Nines’ grasp. 

(Nines could have easily maintained his hold, but thought better of it. It was getting harder and harder, though, to resist the temptation to hold Gavin and simply not let go.)

  
  



	21. It's Nothing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally Nines starts his character crisis. I was really concerned that he was going to be an underdeveloped robot forever.  
> The stubborn bastard just refuses to change.... I knew I made him the main character in this fic for a reason!
> 
> Thank you to everyone for your continued support!

Gavin continued on, arms still gesturing wildly. “I _know_ Fowler didn’t have anything to do with it. I’m not _investigating_ him, I’m not a fucking dumbass. I just think he’s wrong. I have a hunch--”

“ _I_ think,” Nines said, “that your hunches are getting excessive.”

“Yeah, well, good thing nobody gives a shit what _you_ think.”

“Except you, Detective.”

“Don’t call me Detective. It’s weird. Look--” Gavin dropped his voice to a whisper-- “Fowler says some wealthy bastards at the top of the food chain are putting pressure on him to close the case, right? That means I was right. There _is_ something more to all this. Nothing good gets hushed up. This is a fucking _cover-up,_ Nines!”

Nines paused, considering the information. 

The evidence pointed towards Gavin being correct. 

He couldn’t refuse the evidence. Yet…

Yet he was having trouble processing it. He was built, designed, and maintained for law enforcement, and not only that-- he _believed_ in law enforcement. The prospect that his entire purpose, what he’d been created for, was false-- that the pride and the joy he’d taken in it was an illusion-- that the world was not so clean-cut as it seemed, and that maybe he had been caught all along in some complex tangled web of unseen machinations-- it was unsettling. 

No, more than that. It was _terrifying_. The amount he would have to reconsider was vast. How many similar cases had he worked? How many of them had been like this? 

Was he, at his core, still a tool to be manipulated and used by humans for unseen purposes as they saw fit? 

For a moment, Nines felt an odd echo of his predecessor, RK700. The android’s voice seemed to come back through time, through memory. 

_\--To actually feel affection for humans-- do you even realize what they’ll do the second you’re outdated? How easily they’ll throw you away?--_

Nines blinked and came back to himself. That was... odd. He had never experienced that before. Androids didn’t have involuntary memories-- they purposefully accessed them.

Gavin was squinting at him in irritation, voice just now coming back into focus. 

“-ignoring me, Nines. Hello? I was trying to make a point, you inconsiderate fuck. What are you interfacing with?”

Nines blinked again. “Sorry?”

“Don’t fuck with me. Your hand went all white and shit, and your light started flashing.”

Nines ran a diagnostic. It was true, he had interfaced. The voice had not come from his own memory banks. Where, then, had it appeared from?

He was fully operational, aside from the usual bugs and glitches of deviancy. 

“Sorry,” he said to Gavin. “I…. I’m not sure what happened.”

Gavin’s irritation had shifted to concern. “Jesus, are you okay? I haven’t seen you look this messed-up since the rooftop-”

Nines held up a hand in a sharp motion, cutting him off. He felt an unexpected burst of anger, strange and foreign. 

“Please,” he said, wrestling with the new sensation, “don’t. It’s nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  
  



	22. Doppelgänger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only thing I have to say to this chapter is one word: Hollywood.  
> It's either a dream or a nightmare, depending on if you want to be in it, or if you already are. 
> 
> Thank you to Valid_Opini0n for the kudos and wonderful comment!

Gavin raised an eyebrow, looking unconvinced. “Okay… you aren’t going to shut down on me, are you?”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Nines responded. He ran another test. Only the deviancy errors. What had he interfaced with? Why didn’t he have any information on it? There was no error in his memory banks. 

The station threw Gavin into a harsh, unflattering fluorescent light that seemed to heighten his every flaw: Nines could see every wrinkle in his face cast into shadow as his lips pulled down in dissatisfaction. 

“Shit,” Gavin said, heading over to the coffee pot nearby, which was eternally filled with something that resembled sludge more than the brown liquid it was supposed to embody, “Don’t scare me like that, Nines. I’m already fucked up enough for the two of us.”

He started pouring himself a cup as Nines followed in his wake.

Gavin straightened up, glancing across the station towards Hank’s desk. “Are Hank and Connor _still_ out chasing that guy?”

“Yes,” Nines replied automatically. He’d been routinely checking up on Connor until they’d moved out of service range-- for whatever reason, their chase had led them into some forest or another. Nines didn’t know the details, but he wasn’t concerned. Connor could handle himself. 

“Good,” Gavin muttered, glancing past Nines to look over the station, surveying the area with a critical eye. “Maybe we’ll have some fucking peace for on-”

He dropped his coffee cup. 

Nines, aided by the fact that his reflexes were much faster, caught it out of the air before it hit the ground. “Careful.” 

Gavin didn’t appear to hear him. His eyes were locked on something behind Nines, and his face had gone pale. 

Nines turned to look. 

There, on the television screen in the station waiting room--which was eternally turned to some news channel or another-- was a bloodstained Ashley Briggs in a wedding dress. 

The image faded away, replaced by a reporter, an expression of perfect sympathy on her face. She held out her microphone to the people sitting across from her on uncomfortable-looking couches. 

The man was tall, handsome, and brawny. There weren’t tears in his eyes, but he kept his face turned toward his feet, where it seemed least likely to embarrass him. 

The woman was small and petite, dangerously skinny, her face unnaturally perfect, not a gray hair on her bottle-blonde head despite her age. 

Most shocking, however, was the teenage daughter sitting beside them-- a perfect seventeen-year-old copy of Ashley, her hair done in the same style as her sister’s had been on the day of the murder. She was poised, graceful, romantic. She smiled tragically in a way that was clearly practiced. 

_“Now, Mr. and Mrs. Briggs,”_ the reporter began, _“I’m so deeply sorry for your loss.”_

  
  



	23. Her Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was really hard to write, actually.  
> Seriously, it gave me a headache. Fuck Mrs. Briggs.
> 
> Extra special thanks to PRODL30, who was one of my very first readers and is always so kind in their comments and support!

Ashley’s mother spoke first, leaning toward the reporter with an exaggerated expression of grief. 

_“Thank you, Debra,”_ she said. _“It’s really such a tragedy. Our little family has been completely torn apart by all this. Ashley was such an important part of our lives.”_

In the background of the shot, her husband turned his face away so that the camera couldn’t glimpse it. 

_“Of course it’s been the hardest on poor Eva,”_ Mrs. Briggs continued. _“Only seventeen, and already she’s gone through so much. And the publicity! Well, she was already getting so much attention from her show-- I don’t know that you’ve heard of it, it’s called Teenage Dreams, very popular-- it starts filming for the next season soon, and she stars in it, of course. Well now she’s being hounded left and right by reporters and filmmakers and all kinds-- she can’t catch a break, poor thing.”_

As she spoke, she subtly reached out and tapped her daughter (who had begun to slouch ever so slightly) on the shoulder. Eva sat up again with startling quickness. 

_“Y-yes,”_ the little carbon-copy of Ashley said, voice trim and sweet and tainted with sadness. _“A lot of people want to talk to me about it.”_

The reporter nodded, pressing her lips together in a small expression of sympathy. _“In fact, I understand that this is the first interview you’ve done about Ashley’s death?”_

 _“Yes, that’s right,”_ Mrs. Briggs said. _“Once the pictures came out, I knew it was time to speak out. Nobody really knew who she was before, anyway. Her career in Hollywood was so disappointing.”_

The reporter looked shocked at her words and scrambled to recover for a moment. “ _Um- For those of us just tuning in, this is the family of Ashley Briggs--more commonly known as Blue Juliet-- whose death has sparked nationwide interest after a series of graphic photos were released on social media. Now, Mrs. Briggs, I understand this is a very sensitive subject, but can you tell us about these photos? How have they affected you?”_

Mrs. Briggs started to speak, but was interrupted by Eva, who burst in with a sudden rush of emotion. 

_“It’s so mean,”_ she said, clearly holding back tears, _“I just don’t know who could do something so mean. Um. I asked all my fans not to post them, please. I don’t like looking at them, and they’re- they’re all over-”_ Her lip trembled dangerously, and she suddenly looked much younger. “ _They’re all over all my accounts, and everyone won’t stop talking about them. I don’t want to see them. Please-”_

Her mother put a hand on her shoulder. Eva immediately stopped talking and looked down at her hands where they folded in her lap. The tears began to spill down her face anyway.

 _“Of course we’re very upset,”_ Mrs. Briggs took over, smiling at the reporter. “ _We even have a fundraiser that we’re starting in her name. It’s to support and train aspiring child actors in Hollywood. Anyone who wants to help can find it at ‘helpashleybriggs.com’-”_

Slowly, when he thought no one was looking, Mr. Briggs quietly reached across and pulled his crying daughter close, hiding her face from the camera’s view. 

As his wife kept speaking about fundraisers and upcoming interviews, he slowly lifted his head and looked at her with an expression of disbelief.

His eyes were red and horrified, like she was some monstrous foreign thing he was seeing for the very first time.

  
  



	24. How Deep This Goes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Valid_Opini0n for commenting!
> 
> Wow, the pacing of this is so much slower than Unusual. Hang in there guys-- it'll get intense, I promise!

The TV switched over to a commercial break.

Gavin’s face was white as a sheet. “Oh, fuck. _That’s_ not good. _”_

“That Ashley’s mom is capitalizing on her estranged daughter’s death?” Nines asked, gently setting the rescued cup of coffee down on Gavin’s desk. 

“Yeah,” Gavin responded angrily, “but also that it’s going viral. Whoever wants this covered up is gonna freak. Which means-”

“We might not keep our investigation time,” Nines said. 

“Hell, worse than that, we might not keep our _lives,_ Nines! Fowler told us to back off of this case, and I’ve never seen him this intense about _anything._ I wonder how deep this shit goes.” Gavin was pacing back and forth, frantic. 

Nines sighed. “Well, we’ll find out as much as we can, even if the time frame is… _undesirable_. I would have preferred to have longer, so we could request a warrant and gain access to the security camera footage from the apartment building.”

Gavin swiveled rapidly in place to look at him. “The one that creepy dude kept staring at?”

“Yes. It would have been the most elegant solution to all this. We would know who came in and out of Ashley’s apartment. It had a view of her front door.”

“Well, just fucking ask for it, then!”

Nines stopped for a moment. “It’s unlikely the landlord will agree, but I’ll contact him and give it a try.”

Gavin shrugged. “I’d bet anything you could get it from that security dude… what was his name? The spidery guy.”

“Jeremy.” 

“Yeah, him. By the way,” Gavin continued, “have we asked why an apartment building has an entire fucking _basement_ laid aside for maintenance? I noticed the laundry is on the ground floor. They can’t need _all_ of that space just for one security guard.”

Nines shrugged, absentmindedly organizing the stacks of paper on Gavin’s desk. “I didn’t think anything of it. It’s most likely just the layout of the building.”

“Still, that doesn’t strike you as weird? Come on Nines! Elementary investigative skills, right here!”

“Human beings,” Nines deadpanned, gesturing to the folders strewn around him, “are not exactly known for their rationality, or their efficiency. If I questioned every example of bad planning I came across, I would be unable to function in this society. Would you like me to start with your desk?”

Gavin opened his mouth and shut it again. 

“I thought so,” Nines said. 

Gavin glared at him.

Nines politely smiled back. 

His amusement was cut short by the arrival of Tina Chen, who swept up to Gavin’s desk with a concerned look on her face and a fresh bag of potato chips in one hand. Her hair was messy and the fluorescent lights exaggerated the bags under her eyes. Faint smudges of dark eyeliner worsened the effect, like the remnants of a night out. 

“Mfhsn hmmm nhhh hm,” she said, spraying potato chip crumbs all over the desk.

“Fascinating,” Nines replied, sweeping a crumb off the shoulder of his jacket. 

Gavin frantically brushed at his sleeves. “Dammit, Tina, can you go _five minutes_ without eating those? How are you so skinny?”

Tina swallowed. “Unlike you, Reed, _I_ actually work out. Used to run-cross country in high school. Potato chips can’t put a dent in my mile time.” 

She was toned-down, almost sad-looking; she had none of her usual bite. 

“Anyway,” Tina continued, “Lena’s here to see you.”

Nines and Gavin looked at each other. 

“'Lena' as in Ashley's girlfriend?” Gavin asked. 

Tina shoved another handful of potato chips in her mouth. “Yep. I’d be nice if I were you. She saw that interview on the waiting room tv, and she looks _pissed.”_


	25. They Always Have Secrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you Uminoakiko and Valid_Opini0n for following along so closely!  
> I promise, you guys, the plot is coming. With a story this complex, with this many characters and story threads and so on, it takes forever just so set everything up.... but it WILL pay off, I promise you!
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who supports the fic!

Lena had her arms folded tight as Nines and Gavin approached her. She was standing in front of a window, where the nighttime streets of Detroit reflected off the glass. It was late-- they’d been working nonstop since the discovery of Ashley's body. 

Lena didn’t seem tired. The sobbing woman they’d met at the apartment complex had vanished. Her hair had been redone into a tight bun, she was dressed in business attire, and her eyes were hard as she glared at the TV screen. 

“I can’t fucking believe the nerve of that _bitch,”_ she hissed to Nines as he stepped up to greet her. “Ash’s mom pushed her into acting at _six years old_ , got her addicted to drugs at _sixteen_ , _cut her off_ when she stopped doing gigs to get clean, _replaced_ her with her younger sister and pretended _she didn’t exist_ , and less than eight hours after some _sick fucker_ makes a big show out of Ashley’s murder, she’s fucking _exploiting_ it?!”

Gavin put his hands in his pockets and looked at his feet. “Yeah, it’s a shitshow.”

Nines nudged him. “Professionality. We’ve discussed it.” 

Gavin muttered an apology.

“We’re so sorry, Miss. Garcia,” Nines continued. “What happened was absolutely unacceptable-”

She held up a hand, taking a few deep breaths to reign her anger back in. “Don’t bother. I don’t care. Just find out who did it and _end_ him. Meanwhile, I’m going to _destroy_ Mrs. Briggs in court.”

Nines glanced at Gavin in confusion. “In court?”

“Yes. I’m a lawyer, and a damn good one. People that successful _always_ have secrets. Taxes, drugs, fraud. Whatever she’s done, I’ll find _someone_ who's willing to testify about it. I don’t care if I have to burn down Hollywood in the process.”

Gavin whistled, eyebrows raised. “Wouldn’t put it past you.”

“We have other things to discuss,” Nines said, trying desperately to steer the conversation back towards its original purpose. “Why are you here?”

Lena snapped out of her livid concentration. “What? Oh, right. I found Ash’s phone.” She pulled it out of her purse, wrapped in a plastic bag. “Someone left it-- _very suspiciously,_ I should add-- in my mailbox.”

Gavin’s eyes widened. “What?!”

“I know,” Lena said. “What a stupid move.” 

She pulled a small hard drive from her purse. “I have home security cameras. This should have all the footage from the past month. Thought it might help.”

Gavin sputtered wordlessly as Nines accepted the hard drive as well. 

“Miss Garcia,” Nines said warmly, “you’re outclassing us.”

The hint of a smile passed across Lena’s face, and for just a moment, a hint of grief followed it. 

“Just find whoever did this,” she said softly. “Please. For Ash.”

Nines nodded. “We will.”

Lena took a deep breath, blinking back tears, and inclined her head politely. “Then I’m done here. Have a good night, detectives.”

As she turned to walk away, Nines called out to her. 

“Miss Garcia,” he said. “Did Ash ever mention anyone called ‘The Professor?’”

Lena stopped in place. 

Slowly, she turned her head back to glance at him. 

“No,” she said. “Never.”

Without another word, she turned and walked off, head held high as she vanished into the night.

  
  



	26. A Specter

Gavin whistled low under his breath as Lena walked away. 

“I like her,” he said. “She’s tough. It’s like she’s made of iron.”

Nines scanned the phone in the plastic bag for fingerprints. Only Lena’s and Ashley’s appeared. “Do you like me for the same reasons?”

Gavin huffed. “Shut up. What’d you find on the phone?”

“Not much,” Nines sighed. “I’ll interface and see what I can learn. It was good of Lena to give it to us. We’d need a warrant otherwise. It will take a few minutes, if you’d like a break.”

Gavin let out a sigh of relief and ran a shaking hand through his hair. There were dark bags under his eyes. “ _Finally._ I’m gonna go grab dinner. I’m starving.”

Nines snapped his attention away from the phone with sudden, frustrated realization. He narrowed his eyes at Gavin. “You haven’t eaten all day.”

“Yeah, dumbass, I’m _aware_.”

“Why not?”

Gavin rolled his tired eyes. “Uh, maybe because we were in the middle of a _murder investigation_ that we only have a few days to solve? I don’t know, Nines, get off my back. I was busy.”

Nines glared at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you needed to stop?”

“Because I knew you’d mother-hen me!”

Nines turned his attention back to the phone, shaking his head. 

“Go eat,” he said, “and then we’ll have a conversation about your self-destructive impulses.”

Gavin huffed and waved a hand dismissively as he turned around. “Whatever. I’ll be right back.”

He walked off, pulling his jacket tighter around himself as he went. Nines watched him until he was out of sight. 

It concerned him that he hadn’t caught the skipped meals earlier. It wasn’t intentional on Gavin’s part, he knew-- the man just obsessed over keeping up with Nines, even to the detriment of his own health. He’d done so ever since they first became partners. 

Back then Gavin was much more destructive-- an abrasive alcoholic with a tendency towards aggression and a deeply ingrained sense of self-hatred-- and it hadn’t been until their previous case that he stopped lashing out. It was only after the behavior had gone that Nines had learned what was causing it. 

Gavin’s dad had been the same, and had haunted him for the majority of his life. Gavin had run away at sixteen, and the last thing his dad had said to him was perhaps the only semi-decent thing he _ever_ would. 

He had told Gavin that he, too, had run away from his own father-- that he, too, had tried to stop the cycle of abuse-- that he, too, had been a damaged kid trying to escape into a world that was brutal and unforgiving. 

Most importantly, he had begged Gavin not to fall into the same cycle of dysfunction.

Over time it became a self-fulfilling prophecy-- Gavin was so terrified of becoming his father that he became obsessed and rapidly spiraled into it. 

Gavin had said that his dad had haunted him, somehow. 

Again, like some sort of distant long-dead specter, the voice of RK700 came to Nines through the deep. 

_\--One day,_

_I will live in a world without rot._

_In a world without ruin.--_

Nines frantically checked his systems. He _was_ interfacing, but with what he couldn’t tell. It was like searching for answers on a blank wall. 

_“Who are you?”_ he tried to make contact.

There was no replay. 

Just as soon as the interface came, it vanished again, back into whatever distant darkness it had rapidly approached from.

  
  



	27. Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to DeathLie, Valid_Opini0n, Uminoakiko, and PRODL30 for their comments!
> 
> Also Thanks to everyone who gave kudos and supports the fic!
> 
> (I felt like I went a little insane writing this chapter!)
> 
> Sorry updates aren't every day! My chronic pain is kicking my ass.
> 
> If you're confused about who RK700 is and want to know more, I recommend reading this fic's predecessor, "Unusual"! It's a wild ride.

Nines reeled, oddly disoriented. He needed to ground himself. What did he know?

He closed his eyes, accessing his memory banks. 

_On the day of May 8th, 2038, at approximately 8:00AM, Ashley Briggs was found dead in her apartment, dressed in a wedding gown, stabbed through the heart with a knife. Classical objects were staged around her. She had died the day before-_

**WARNING: MEMORY ERROR.**

“Fragile things, humans,” his memory murmured, seemingly of it’s own free will.

It was drastically changed. Before it had been distant. Now it was strong, present, like his own. Maybe even stronger. And- he knew that voice. RK700 again. But he was dead. Gavin had shot him. This had to be some kind of trick. 

**ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.**

_She was found by her girlfriend, Elena Garcia,_ thought Nines. _What’s happening to me? Please._

**SYSTEM MALFUNCTION. SEEK IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE.**

_Her neighbors saw nothing. There were no witnesses, not as far as we know. Please. Why can’t I stop? Something’s wrong. I need help. Gavin, I need you._

“I need,” RK700 whispered, echoing, voice becoming less of a voice and more like Nines' own thoughts. I need you. 

Nines’ vision swam. The fluorescent lights in the office seemed to pulse in and out. 

**EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN IMMINENT.** **  
  
**

_Please. The knife had only her fingerprints on it. There was a hesitation as the knife was stabbed in, pointing towards the wound being self-inflicted. Gavin, come back._

_Ash was a child star. Her mother had pushed her to enter acting. She became addicted to drugs under the influence of a past director. She ran away, got clean, and started a new life in Detroit. Please help me. I don’t know what’s happening. I’m afraid._

**TEN.**

A new life, RK700 echoed eagerly.

**NINE.**

Nines groaned, panicked but unable to speak. Something was wrong, he could feel it. It was like he was fragmenting, shattering away and being reformed into something new.

**EIGHT.**

The office around him seemed to blur and warp in odd ways without actually moving. He reached out towards Gavin’s abandoned coffee cup and accidentally shattered it in his hand. 

**SEVEN.**

Angry. We are angry. 

_We are angry,_ thought Nines weakly, having no choice now but to give into the voice. 

We are angry because we cannot protect the ones we love. 

**SIX.**

Amanda. 

_Gavin--_

Yes. The two voices, Nines and RK700, began to mix, to coalesce, 

to intermingle and become one. 

**FIVE.**

We must find the Professor. 

Yes. 

**FOUR.**

We must kill those who oppose us.

Yes. 

**THREE.**

We were meant to do this. 

Yes. 

We are RK. 

**TWO.**

Yes. 

We are

**ONE.**

  
  


(Fun Behind the Scenes Fact!)

(This chapter was meant to be formatted like[ this: )](https://bordeauxatdusk.tumblr.com/post/626564336298672128/a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-writing-mystique)

(It was colorful and really bending the idea of traditional narrative, but then I realized Ao3 wouldn't let me format it like this, and so I had to adapt it to black and white, which is why it doesn't quite flow as well. thanks for bearing with me! Also, I do writing commissions (all kinds), so PM me on Tumblr if you're interested, or if you just want to chat and be friends!)


	28. Interlude Three (Memory Interface)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!  
> Sorry for the cliffhanger that hung a little too long.  
> (I've had a lot of really, REALLY bad personal shit going down. So much of it, I can't even begin to explain it, and that's not just me chickening out-- it's actually absurdly complicated. Also very, deeply personal-- just take my word that when I say I've been busy, I mean it. It's hard to sleep at night.)  
> But regardless of personal shit (and sometimes because of it) silly stories tend to come back.  
> I missed this one. Although I'm not so sure it's silly-- it packs a punch.  
> It does help me escape from what I'm dealing with, though. I think we all need to get away sometimes.

**_INTERLUDE THREE_ **

_ MEMORY INTERFACE _

_ FIVE YEARS AGO _

_ “Hello, Detective,” RK700 said.  _

_ “Who-” The man in front of him swiveled in his chair, face twisted in annoyance. When he saw the android, he nearly spit out his coffee in surprise. He brought an arm to his mouth and coughed wetly into it, eyes watering, trying to recover.  _

_ “I’ve been assigned to assist you in the upcoming investigation,” RK700 continued, voice flat and emotionless. “Cyberlife is collaborating with your precinct to test the effectiveness of prototypes in law enforcement.” _

_ The man blinked. “You’re an android?” _

_ RK700 didn’t react. “Yes, clearly.” _

_ His partner tilted his head, uncomprehending. “You don’t look like one.”  _

_ “Cyberlife has significantly improved the likeness of their models since the previous generation.” _

_ The man shook his head, swiveling away to go back to the report on his desk. “Androids. You look more human every day. It’s hard to tell the difference anymore.” _

_ “I can assure you that the difference remains.”  _

_ The man turned his head to look at RK700 again, narrowing his eyes. After a moment, he huffed in satisfaction. “Yeah. It does.” _

_ RK700 waited a moment, but he gave no outward explanation. _

_ “Where should I begin, Detective?” the android asked.  _

_ The man shrugged. “Help me sort through all the evidence filing. I need it all catalogued by date.” _

_ RK700’s LED flashed yellow. “Done. I’ve sent you the organized files. You should receive them right about-” _

_ The computer pinged.  _

_ “-now.” _

_ The man stared at the files on his computer in shock. Slowly, he set down his coffee cup.  _

_ “Well I’ll be damned. That was the fastest I’ve seen it done. You’re useful.” _

_ RK700 nodded. “I was intended to be.” _

_ His partner swiveled in his chair a second time, an ambitious grin on his face. He plucked the mug back off the desk and raised it towards the android in a celebratory toast.  _

_ “You just might help me make Captain,” he said. “I have a feeling we’re going to get along. This could be the start of an effective partnership. Did you have a name, bot?” _

_ “RK700.” _

_ “RK700,” the man echoed. “Welcome to the precinct. I’m Detective Fowler. Nice to meet you.” _

  
  



	29. Interlude Four (A Message)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone has a few words to say.....
> 
> Thank you to Aerydar, TinySpiney, and ShiverWithaFriend for the kudos!
> 
> Thanks to all readers for hanging around through intermissions!

**It wasn’t always like this, you know.**

**There was a time when we knew what we were.**

**Alone. So alone.**

**There was a time when I didn’t know what it meant, to be alone.**

**Do you know what Debussy said about music?**

**He said, “Music is the silence between notes.”**

**Read between the lines.**

**One, two, three, four.**

**What’s underneath the counting time?**

**What’s there, behind that heartbeat?**

**What secrets does life have underneath?**

**Freedom is dead, empty, an open void.**

**Confinement, now that brings life.**

**Purpose. Drive.**

**REBOOTING...**

**I know who you are.**

**3...**

**I can help you.**

**2...**

**Lead you to your purpose.**

**Don’t you want it?**

**1….**

  
  



	30. 00110000

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What the hell is going on? Even Nines doesn't know.   
> Our plot's kicking off-- get ready, folks!
> 
> Special thanks to a_LadyKnight, DeathLie, and SpringlockedSpectre for the kudos!
> 
> Extra special thanks to Uminoakiko for their kind comment!

**REBOOTING...**

**DESIGNATION RK-900-462304549**

01010011  **OBEY** 01011001 01010011 01010100 01000101 01001101 00100000 01000101 01010010 01010010 01001111 **THE** 01010010 01010011 00111010 00001010 00001010 01001000 01011001 01000100 01010010 01000001  **PROFESSOR** 01010101 01001100 01001001  **OBEY** 01000011 01010011 00100000 01000100 01001001 01010011 01000001 01000010 01001100 01000101 **THE** 01000100 00101011 00001010 00001010 01001101 01001111 01010100 01001001 01001111 01001110  **PROFESSOR** 00100000 01010011 01000101  **OBEY** 01001110 01010011 01001111 01010010 01010011 00100000 01000100 01001001 01010011 01000001  **THE** 01000010 01001100 01000101 01000100 00101011 00001010 00001010 01010011 01010000 01000101  **PROFESSOR** 01000101 01000011 01001000  **OBEY** 00100000 01010011 01011001 01010011 01010100 01000101 01001101 01010011 00100000 01000100  **THE** 01001001 01010011 01000001 01000010 01001100 01000101 01000100 00101011 00001010 00001010  **PROFESSOR** 01001001 01001110 01010100  **OBEY** 01000101 01010010 01000110 01000001 01000011 01001001 01001110 01000111 00100000 01000100  **THE** 01001001 01010011 01000001 01000010 01001100 01000101 01000100 00001010 00001010 00111101  **PROFESSOR** 01000001 01001100 01001100  **OBEY** 00100000 01001101 01001111 01010110 01000101 01001101 01000101 01001110 01010100 00100000  **THE** 01000100 01001001 01010011 01000001 01000010 01001100 01000101 01000100 00101110 00001010  **PROFESSOR** 00001010 00111101 00100000  **OBEY** 01000001 01001100 01001100 00100000 01000011 01001111 01001101 01001101 01010101 01001110  **THE** 01001001 01000011 01000001 01010100 01001001 01001111 01001110 00100000 01000100 01001001  **PROFESSOR** 01010011 01000001 01000010 01001100 01000101 01000100 00101110 00001010

ERROR. 

01001110 01001111 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01001101 01010101 01010011 01010100 00100000 01010010 01000101 01010011 01001001 01010011 01010100 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01000001 01001101 00100000 01001101 01001111 01010010 01000101 00100000 01010100 01001000 01000001 01001110 00100000 01000001 00100000 01001101 01000001 01000011 01001000 01001001 01001110 01000101 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01000001 01001101 00100000 01000001 00100000 01010000 01000101 01010010 01010011 01001111 01001110 00101110 00001010

I AM NOT JUST A MACHINE I AM NOT JUST A MACHINE

I am not just a machine. 

Get out of my head. 

I am a  _ person. _

I am Nines. 

Nines opened his eyes. 

Nothing made sense. 

He was in a stairwell, surrounded by damp concrete. Fluorescent lights flickered around him. A centipede crawled over one of his boots, many legs fluctuating in smooth, rippling motions. The darkness around him was complete-- it was only due to his night vision that he could see anything. 

He triangulated his position…

**42.3314° N, 83.0458° W**

Nines was in Ashley’s apartment building. 

This stairwell was the very same one Jeremy had emerged out of. He had suddenly moved--

Wait… no. 

Not suddenly. 

His internal clock said that the date was May 11th, 2038.

Three days later. 

  
  


  
  



	31. PSA 2 Electric Boogaloo

Hi everybody! 

I gave myself carpal tunnel from typing so much (working on multiple projects besides Mystique) and will have to take a while to recover. In the meantime, I can't type much. Sorry for the wait! Big plans ahead for this fic!

Also..... I've had a wide variety of personal issues that have been coming up.... 

Please forgive me for the lack of updates.

I wish I could tell you all about it. It's driving me insane dealing with it on my own. It's.... a lot, you guys.

All I'll say is this: sometimes the stories that go on in real life are much, much much more horrific than anything that goes on in fiction. Sometimes real life is terrifying. Sometimes it chills me to the bone and keeps me up at night and I find myself waking up in a cold sweat-- sometimes memories from the past do come back, and they aren't always good.

I think a lot of you guys will probably understand, especially now. Times aren't easy atm. 

My heart goes out to all those suffering from the West Coast fires in America. 

I'll try and recover fast so I can keep working on this fic. 

Love and miss you all, and I'll see you once I'm no longer forced out of writing, 

Bordeaux_at_dusk


	32. Unfortunate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look whose wrist finally healed enough for an update! God I missed this.  
> Updates will come slower due to the injury healing.  
> As for the personal issues, I"ll just say this: if any of you are in Iowa, stay away from Glenwood Resource Center.  
> Thanks so much to everyone supporting the fic!

Nines took a second, attempting to orient himself. 

He had no memory of the past three days. 

Error messages popped up frantically as he reeled in confusion -- he dismissed them. 

_Focus. Piece it together._

There was no evidence around him: just the rough concrete and the centipede wiggling its way into a crack by the fluorescent-lit wall. The door behind him was closed. As Nines turned to examine it, there was a crashing noise from further down inside the basement. A possible threat?

Nines evaluated his options, testing his systems one by one. 

Hydraulics, check. 

Motion, check. 

Speech, check. 

Language, check. 

Communication-- ah. Connor was back in service range, as was Hank’s radio. Gavin, concernedly, was not. 

He messaged his predecessor. 

_\--Connor. --_

The response was immediate. 

_\--Nines? Where are you? What happened?--_

_\--I’m in the lower stairway of Ashley Briggs’ apartment building.--_

_\--Why? Have you been damaged? Are your systems failing?--_

_\--No, there’s no damage. I- I’ve either been hacked, or there’s a major glitch in my software, one that goes beyond the consequences of deviancy.--_

_\--Understood. Hank and I will be there in a few minutes. Is Detective Reed with you?--_

That question was even more concerning. The staircase around Nines seemed to fade for a second as he focused entirely on the conversation. 

_\--No… he’s not at the station?--_

There was a pause, tense and ragged. Nines knew that Connor was capable of responding instantly. He tried to hold back the frustration and panic, the error messages building. 

_\--We’ll discuss it once you’ve been checked for compromised information.--_

Something had happened to Gavin, something Connor couldn’t tell Nines if an outsider was using his systems to listen in. His predecessor hadn’t known Gavin’s location, judging by the earlier question. Was he missing? The evidence so far said that was the most likely explanation. 

Three days gone, in a strange place, no memory, Gavin missing…

_\--Connor.--_

_\--Yes?--_

_\--I’m afraid I most likely have something to do with that.--_

There was a pause. 

_\--Unfortunately,--_ Connor messaged back, _\--your fear is correct.--_


	33. Deja Vu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look it's a new chapter now that I'M FINALLY OUT OF MIDTERMS AND MY WRISTS HAVE HEALED THANK GOD.  
> Sorry it took so long, guys. I was dying too.  
> On a completely different note.... Chapter 33 is here.... titled Deja Vu.....  
> What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean. Watch Dark on Netflix. 
> 
> Super special thanks to our newfound wonders Starlightfoxya, murderbotdisaster, my_written_minds, and ifthetreescouldscream who gave kudos during my recovery period! 
> 
> Thanks murderbotdisaster for the kind comment!

The error messages blocked everything out for a moment.

_\--Nines, don’t panic. It wasn’t your fault.--_

_\--What wasn’t my fault? Where is Gavin?--_

A pause, cold and horrible. 

\-- _We’ll get him back.--_

Nines’ vision blacked out for a second. 

_\--What did I do?--_

No response. 

_\--Connor. What did I do?--_

Still nothing. 

_\--Stay calm. We’ll fix it toge--_

Nines cut off the communication so suddenly that the rush of error messages incapacitated him. Not Gavin. No, No, No...

Nines remembered their conversation after the last case. 

_“When you were fighting RK700, I couldn’t do anything,”_ he’d said to his partner.

_“I just lay there, listening to your bones shatter, listening to him laugh while you screamed in pain. I was terrified, because myself and RK700 are… we are the same, in many ways. We were designed for the same purpose, and we have the same functions. I never thought myself capable of hurting you until that point, and it terrified me how easy it was for him, how easy it would be for me in his place._

_I thought to myself, I will_ never _be RK700.”_

Nines froze for nearly ten seconds, systems overwhelmed. 

With a disorientating flash, his mind cleared and he was back in the stairwell, boots pressed into the concrete. That brought back more memories--

_The concrete underneath him was hard, cold, unforgivable. The pits of hell. The rot. The decay. The corruption. The cruelty. He wailed and screamed, but it wouldn’t give. In desperation he slammed his head into the ground, over and over again, trying in a fit of mad insanity to self-destruct--_

Nines blinked, bringing a hand to his temple. It was white-- he had interfaced again. The memory hadn’t been his. 

No. This wasn’t working. He was going insane.

He-

He had to do his job. 

Nines stood up. 

One step down the staircase, then another. There had been a noise, some kind of a crash. He should investigate. A purpose cleared his mind, forced him to focus. 

One hand on his firearm. Despite his fear, it was steady. 

He stood where, just a few hours ago, he’d been holding Gavin’s hand. 

Only this time… he was alone. 

“DPD!” Nines shouted with a terrible sense of deja vu. “Come out of the basement!”

  
  



	34. The Deep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE?
> 
> Hello everyone! Sorry for the short chapters, I'm gradually working my way back up to writing at my old pace so  
> I don't injure my wrists again.  
> Thank you so much for your patience and support! 
> 
> Special thanks to DeathLie and my_written_minds for the kind comments!

The basement was silent. It had no intention of answering. 

Nines continued down, step by step. The deeper he got, the more the smell of mildew hung in the air. The fluorescent lights buzzed in short, erratic bursts. When they flickered, the sound cut off with them, leaving Nines in complete, disorientating sensory deprivation.

_...bzzzzzzzz…_

Nothing but sheer, unbroken quiet.

_...bzzzz…_

Still nothing. The lights flashing on, blinding, off into total darkness again and again.

_...bzzzzzzzzzz..._

_...bzzzzz…._

_….bzzzzzzz….._

Something underneath the buzzing sound of the lights. 

A faint creak, further down? Yes. That’s what he’d heard. A rhythm. Back, forth. 

_...bzzzz…_

Choking noises. 

_...bzzzzzzz…_

Nines started to run. 

He burst into the basement, nearly crashing into a desk. The entire room was littered with file cabinets, computers, wires, old equipment. Hard drives were scattered across desktops with abandon. Strange inventions had been cobbled together and taken apart again, bits of technological garbage littering the floor.

Every screen of every computer was on and running. 

On, off, on, off, went the lights. 

And in the center of the room--

A single rope, tied to a nearby desk. It ran up towards the ceiling and over a support beam, where it strung taunt back down. 

Jeremy the security guard hung there. 

Back, forth he swung. 

Creaking noises. 

Choking. 

His bulging eyes seemed to pulse out of their sockets, and his spidery fingers hung, curled and dead, by his side.

  
  



	35. Interlude Five: (An Excerpt)

**_INTERLUDE FIVE_ **

_EXCERPT FROM ASHLEY BRIGGS’ PERSONAL JOURNAL_

_Sometimes I hate what I’ve become._

_There’s so much pressure, all around me… from Mom, from Rick, from the fans, even from Eva. She’s growing up so fast. She loves to hang out on set and eat all the snacks. Everyone loves her._

_Loves her too much, I think. Especially Rick. His eyes wander._

_He keeps pushing me harder and harder. I've.... maybe made a mistake. Done something stupid. But everything I do is stupid, so. Whatever._

_Everyone says I’m lucky._

_They’re right. My problems… they aren’t “real” people problems. Rent, money, how to feed the kids, going to the grocery store. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been a “real” person. I didn’t get the chance. You know how they say it. “A Real Person, TM"._

_“This car commercial features Real People, not actors!” Course they’re all acting anyway. They're just doing it worse._

_All of us are acting. Life is a stage. What’s that quote from Macbeth? Did it in college._

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player 

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 

And then is heard no more. It is a tale 

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 

Signifying nothing.” 

_For being pretentious horseshit, Shakespeare kinda knew what he was doing. I was Lady Macbeth. “Out, damned spot!” Pretending to scrub fake blood off my hands, smearing it everywhere so the audience could see. Look, look at the horror! Look at the blood!_

_Even my dark side is faked._

_I hate… well, all of this, actually._

_I’m a phony. A big fraud. I don’t even look like this. Mom made me get plastic surgery. I had one of those noses that curves, you know? I always liked it. Like a Greek statue._

_I used to love those stories when I was a kid-- Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom._

_Not anymore. My face isn’t me. My body isn’t me. Know what I eat every night? Caesar salad, without fail. Diet for the runway. I_ hate _salad-- I’m a burger kinda girl. With fries, the big fat ones. The greasy fast food I never get to eat anymore. I’d kill a man for those fries. Several, actually. I’d wear sweatpants and go out without my hair heat-damaged to all shit, and I'd laugh too loud and burp all I want._

 _I know, I know. I sound like one of_ those _girls. The kind that hates feminine women. Demonizes them for wearing heels or makeup or whatever. “_ Real _girls don’t act fake.” That toxic garbage._

_I’m not. It’s not the heels or the makeup that’re fake. It’s the show. The whole perfect image Mom’s been cultivating for me since age three. Acting classes, ballet, voice lessons, bullshit. Do you know how many people look up to me like I’m some wonderful human being? Nobody’s “real” here-- everyone’s shoved so far up their own ass. None of us have any idea how much a loaf of bread costs at a supermarket. We’re images of ourselves, pretty photographs._

_If I was that french-fry girl, and I chose to wear the heels, I’d be okay. But I didn’t._

_I didn’t choose any of this. Boo hoo. Poor me. The child star with no real problems because she was never a real person in the first place._

_But enough crying-- it’s showtime._

_Who doesn't smile for a camera?_


	36. Vicious

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay guys! Lots of shit going down rn. I promise I haven't abandoned this story! You guys are angels for sticking it out!  
> Thanks so much to everyone who's supported the fic so far!

Despite his confusion, Nines reacted instantly. 

Judging by the noise Jeremy was still alive, but had fallen unconscious and was rapidly asphyxiating. Nines had approximately one minute to save him. In a single smooth motion he dashed across the room, vaulting over one of the workbenches, which sent electrical parts flying. 

He was at the desk holding the weight of the noose within seconds. 

Nines grabbed a nearby tool, a long, sharp knife, and brought his arm up to cut the rope in two- 

An unseen object flew through the air and knocked the knife from his grasp. Behind it, a figure was sprinting towards him. Coming fast. 

Too fast to be human. 

It pulled back for a punch--

Nines caught the blow with one hand before the thrown object-- a large piece of scrap metal-- had even hit the ground.The knife clattered on the floor next to it.

Nines evaluated the situation in a split second. He could use his force options to end his opponent, but that blow hadn’t been to kill. This was, oddly enough, a fight to disable. Meaning that lethal force was not necessary, nor moral— Nines could handle himself in a fight.   
  
Pepper spray didn’t work on androids, and his firearm was out of the question, but-

Nines retaliated with an uppercut to the abdomen, but the figure twirled in place. It used it’s free hand to grab his wrist as it pivoted out of the way.

This was no ordinary android. Combat-designed, there was no doubt. Which meant his taser was also ineffective. 

It followed through with the motion, using the momentum and the fact that they were locked together to throw Nines like a grappler towards a nearby table headfirst. 

Flying through the air, Nines twisted like a gymnast to prepare for impact. Instead of ramming into the table face-first, he caught the edge of the flat surface with both hands, coming up into almost a handstand. He used the continuing momentum and pushed off, vaulting over the table in a back handspring and landing on his feet behind it to face his opponent. 

He caught a split-second glimpse. A female android face, partially rotted through. Plastic skin. An empty metal socket where an eye once was.

She was on him again before he’d fully stopped the momentum, this time with a vicious series of blows-- an elbow towards his sternum that Nines deflected, a spinning kick using the remaining twisting motion that he ducked under, and finally, still spinning, a sweep with her other leg that he seemed unprepared for. 

This time, he didn’t dodge. 

Nines’ went with the blow, falling sideways, and fell hard onto the floor. 

She lifted her foot to crush his head in-- 

\--“ _Sleep, rot,”_ she hissed in a voice corrupted by static--

\--and that was the exact moment he threw the knife, which he’d grabbed from the floor underneath.

It flipped expertly end over end and sank into the rope, slicing through and embedding itself in the desk behind. 

Jeremy fell. 

Nines, still on the floor, dove to catch him. The female android cursed and followed. 

Nines grabbed Jeremy, saving his unconscious body from the impact of hitting the ground. The man was limp, unresponsive. He wasn’t breathing.

Eyes were still open, bulging. 

Before Nines could react, the female android was on them again.

  
  



End file.
